Unfortunately not. Lossless would exceed the data rate of optical so it was not a possibility there. We could have done it for HDMI I suppose but for now, we are maxing it out at 1.5 mbit/sec.

Note that WMA Pro is more advanced than other codecs (think of it as the VC-1 of audio codecs) so at 1.5 mbit/sec, it should be quite transparent.

As sad as I am that we won't have LPCM, WMA Pro support has me pretty excited since I have a Pioneer receiver. So am I to understand that for HD-DVDs, the HD audio codecs will be reencoded as WMA Pro and output over HDMI? Does that work with optical too? If it does, do I even need to buy an Elite to get WMA Pro output for HD-DVDs, or will it just come with one of the updates?

Thanks for jumping on here and answering our questions!

The 1.3 profile was not possible because we started the design before 1.3 was finalized and we did not have access to the on-going spec work there. 7.1 LPCM is a high rate audio signal and would require more circuit redesign than we wanted to have in this new addition. But at high level, this stuff is not too hard to do compared to all the other electronics in the box. And certainly not an issue of processing power. We are only talking about audio data paths being wide enough.

Amir -

With all due respect, this is far from the truth.

HDMI 1.0 has wide enough data paths to carry 7.1 LPCM at 192KHz and at 24Bit resolution.

If it's not hard to do, and it's not an issue of processing power, and it most certainly isn't an issue of which 'profile' of HDMI you're using, what is the true reason for the Elite not being able to deliver 7.1LPCM over HDMI?

Amir -

With all due respect, this is far from the truth.

HDMI 1.0 has wide enough data paths to carry 7.1 LPCM at 192KHz and at 24Bit resolution.

If it's not hard to do, and it's not an issue of processing power, and it most certainly isn't an issue of which 'profile' of HDMI you're using, what is the true reason for the Elite not being able to deliver 7.1LPCM over HDMI?
I was not talking about HDMI data path. But internal data path in 360 for audio on the way out to HDMI bridge.

I guess I need to go through another 6000 posts before people assume that I know what HDMI can or cannot do :).

Sheesh.

The competition is going to have a field day with that one.

No benefit whatsoever (except a few less wires) in having the HDMI port then.
OK, I will comment once more on this. But please, continue the discussion elsewhere from here on.

Elite can do the following:

1. 120 gigabyte hard disk allows lots more storage of downloaded content, music and in the future, HD DVD interactivity content and extras.

2. HDMI for full digital video path end to end.

3. Single cable audio/video through HDMI.


4. HDMI is useful for people who are out of analog ports on their TV.

#1 you can add to your current units. The others are unique to Elite.


As for competition, well, they lost one of their big "talking points" with HDMI now being available. So if anything, they are less well off today, than they were last week. Now, if they want to go and convince the typical gamer that somehow Dolby Digital, DTS and WMA-Pro are not good quality, well, they can be my guest. Their audience is listening to MP3 players for heaven's sake and don't seem to be complaining. And never wanted a new format because they thought the audio in DVD was bad.

Again, I know people want to complain, argue or whatever about this. Welcome to do that in dedicated forums for that purpose as I don’t think we are unearthing any new data here.

As sad as I am that we won't have LPCM, WMA Pro support has me pretty excited since I have a Pioneer receiver. So am I to understand that for HD-DVDs, the HD audio codecs will be reencoded as WMA Pro and output over HDMI? Does that work with optical too?
Yes it does.

If it does, do I even need to buy an Elite to get WMA Pro output for HD-DVDs, or will it just come with one of the updates?
That is part of the spring update so no, you don't need Elite for WMA Pro over optical.

Thanks for jumping on here and answering our questions!
My pleasure. I know there is a lot of pent up demand here.

Thanks amirm for the updates, this information did not exist on the net, and is being spread exponentially now.

Edited:

New Question, plugging in the drive to my PC, PowerDVD appears to correctly access the Dolby TrueHD track, not providing PC support aside, Is the Drive actually, correctly accessing these tracks and sending them to my PC for 7.1 output over my audio card?

That is to say, the limitation in accessing the full HD-Audio tracks is limited only by the 360 and not the Drive itself?
The drive is "dumb" in that it doesn't know what it is reading. It is totally up to the player to extract and playback the streams. So any limitation is in PowerDVD, not the drive.

amirm, you miss this question. Can you please address it?

Thanks,
I don't really know. I suspect it is the same drive as the current unit.

Dude, it's Saturday. Most of the xbox team has the day off. There is no reason to be pushy and rude. Who is Amir going to call to get your answer asap on a weekend?

Man I get really irritated by all the people here who think the insiders life goal is to be their 24/7 tech support. We are lucky he's using his own day off to come in this forum already.

I know this post is against the rules, but I couldn't stop myself, sorry.
:).

Thanks for understanding everyone. I am pestering the Xbox folks for answers but I don't want to push them too hard as ultimately, this is our forum, not theirs.

I also had to spend a couple of hours driving home from our vacation house (including a nice few minutes, floating with engines off in the middle of the Puget Sound with the car ferry floating for no good reason mid-span!).

thanks!!I can buy that with pleasure!!I look forward to vga fix too, hopefully it will sync with my bravia xbr3 with better pq? what u say
I just confirmed that a lot of fixes have been made for Sony LCDs. So hopefully you are good to go, with both analog and digital connections here.

I don't really know. I suspect it is the same drive as the current unit.
Amir, reportedly a new "super quiet" BenQ VAD6038 drive was incorporated into the pre-Elite Xbox's. If this is the drive in the Elite then that would be a plus, I'm suspecting thats the case, any way to verify? (at your convenience of course :) )

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/12718/New-DVD-Drive-Makes-Xbox-360-Super-Quiet/

I just confirmed that a lot of fixes have been made for Sony LCDs. So hopefully you are good to go, with both analog and digital connections here.
Would those fixes apply to Sony SXRD RPTVs as well? I've got two of those beasts and they don't play well with X360 VGA at the moment.

Would those fixes apply to Sony SXRD RPTVs as well? I've got two of those beasts and they don't play well with X360 VGA at the moment.
I don't have detailed information so can't comment. Assuming Sony uses similar electronics, there is a good chance it will also any issues with them.

Amir, reportedly a new "super quiet" BenQ VAD6038 drive was incorporated into the pre-Elite Xbox's. If this is the drive in the Elite then that would be a plus, I'm suspecting thats the case, any way to verify? (at your convenience of course :) )

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/12718/New-DVD-Drive-Makes-Xbox-360-Super-Quiet/
Sure. I sent them the question. If they never answer anything from me in the future after all the time I have pestered them so far, we know who to blame :p.

The 1.3 profile was not possible because we started the design before 1.3 was finalized and we did not have access to the on-going spec work there.

This seems odd. I believe the PS3 supports the HDMI 1.3 Profile and it has been "available" for over 5 months. How long ago did Microsoft decide to plan and produce the "elite" model?

We are not pushing people to buy stand-alone player. Xbox 360 (Elite or otherwise) provide a superb HD experience.

Have to disagree with you Amir. I have no access to listening to the HD audio that I have purchased on some of my HD-DVDs through my Xbox360, and by Microsoft's recent "elite" decisions, I will never have access to listening to the full bandwidth of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD soundtracks.

Thank you for your honesty though. I no longer have to sell my current xbox to purchase an "elite" one.

This seems odd. I believe the PS3 supports the HDMI 1.3 Profile and it has been "available" for over 5 months. How long ago did Microsoft decide to plan and produce the "elite" model?
See founder list here: http://www.hdmi.org/about/adopters_founders.asp ;)

(hint: founders design, adopters follow when it is done)

Have to disagree with you Amir. I have no access to listening to the HD audio that I have purchased on some of my HD-DVDs through my Xbox360, and by Microsoft's recent "elite" decisions, I will never have access to listening to the full bandwidth of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD soundtracks.
Actually you do. The 360 in all flavors will decode TrueHD in 5.1. And by selecting that track you get somewhat better quality because you are essentially starting with the original soundtrack in your player. And of course, your discs survive many generation of players.

Regardless, the point I made is that compressed output is still a superb experience. Many people used to say that their DVDs sounded better at home, than many theaters they had been to. If so, then we are still talking about great audio here.

Yes indeed. As I noted, HDMI is not necessary for most people. VGA is actually more flexible in that it has no copy protection and as you say it is supported on computer monitors which for gaming applications, is quite nice as many people like to use their consoles in bedroom and such. We have tried to get this message out but the other side keeps saying everyone needs HDMI (persumably to convince people to also go and buy a new TV/AVR). So we went ahead and provided that option too even though it doesn't provide a better picture experience for 99% of the people out there.



I can imagine that the absence of copy protection mechanisms is another reason that 'the other side' wouldn't care to point out the great PQ and capabilities of good ole VGA connectivity. I wish the industry success in fighting against piracy but HDMI is after all a very nice way to get consumers to buy DRM and encryption technology w/o thinking about it. ;)

In terms of Xbox marketing though I think awareness could be higher in general that even for those many consumers w/o hdtv's they could get a taste of high def from their existing computer monitors. Not to mention, the current VGA option is an advantage over the PS3 (which I also have).

It is just a matter of cost both for us and retailers. As soon as you have two colors, you have to then forecast the need for each type and if you make wrong guess, you wind up with too many of one, and not enough of the other. And of course retailers would not want to carry two version of something if one would do.

Fortunately, offering other colors is not difficult and if there is enough demand, I am sure our Xbox team would consider that feedback.

I can see the cost issue but it wouldn't it be minimal cost to put out a small limited run of black hd-dvd addons and make them available say online and thru a few retailers that choose to order them? I would think that a retailer displaying the elite 360 with HDTV's would much prefer the black/black combo on a showroom floor.

What is the best way to get feedback to the Xbox team from AVS on the desire for a matching addon drive to pair with the elite? Is it possible that a 3rd Party manufacturer could make an addon drive for the 360?

Does the HD-A1 include enough persistent storage for one TrueHD track at 1.4Mbps average for a 2 hour movie? If not, how about the other Toshiba players?
I don't know how much is in there. You would need to ask Toshiba that. However, the unit does have a USB socket. $10 buys you a flash Thumb drive that does the job. But a better bet would be a hard disk or with a firmware update, a NAS or other network drive (e.g. PC hard drive) utilizing the mandatory network interface on HD DVD players. In other words, storage for this kind of thing could be "free" for most users (let alone serious audiophiles).

To clarify my question, I asked if any HD DVDs use seamless branching now and mentioned that the MI3 branching I saw was seamed (which is much easier than seamless branching) so it wouldn't erroneously be claimed as one with it.

--Darin
Well OK :). I think! :D

See founder list here: http://www.hdmi.org/about/adopters_founders.asp ;)
(hint: founders design, adopters follow when it is done)


Thanks for the link Amir.
http://www.hdmi.org/press/pr/pr_20060622.asp
So does this mean that Microsoft had finalized the design of the 'elite' 360 before June 2006? Or does the word 'release' mean only for the founders and not the adopters?

Actually you do. The 360 in all flavors will decode TrueHD in 5.1... Regardless, the point I made is that compressed output is still a superb experience.

Now if the Xbox360 only delivered a 576p picture instead of a 1080p picture, would you still tells us that we were getting a 'superb' experience?? :P

I need to get rid of my hd-dvd add-on and get a stand-alone.
Do you know when Toshiba is releasing their machines in NZ?

Thanks for the link Amir.
http://www.hdmi.org/press/pr/pr_20060622.asp
So does this mean that Microsoft had finalized the design of the 'elite' 360 before June 2006? Or does the word 'release' mean only for the founders and not the adopters?
I prefer to not dig in further on this. Hope that is OK. There is so much you want to know regarding "how sausage is made" :D.


Now if the Xbox360 only delivered a 576p picture instead of a 1080p picture, would you still tells us that we were getting a 'superb' experience?? :P
Problem is, I can show anyone the difference between 576p and 1080p as there is a huge resolution boost. But I have a heck of a time convincing a fraction of those people that there is a difference between TrueHD and DTS.

I need to get rid of my hd-dvd add-on and get a stand-alone.
Do you know when Toshiba is releasing their machines in NZ?
I thought they already released in Australia and with that, in NZ. No? If not, without region coding, it should be reasonable to import one from anywhere.

But here is a better offer. Host an HD DVD meet and it will be a pleasure for me to come there and bring you a unit. I will do anything to go back to one of the most beautiful countries with the friendliest people I have ever run into :).

I thought they already released in Australia and with that, in NZ. No? If not, without region coding, it should be reasonable to import one from anywhere.

There seems to be zero presence in NZ from Toshiba with their HD-DVD players. :(
Aren't different voltages an issue when importing hardware?

But here is a better offer. Host an HD DVD meet and it will be a pleasure for me to come there and bring you a unit. I will do anything to go back to one of the most beautiful countries with the friendliest people I have ever run into :).

I was hoping to catch up with you on my next trip to the US but it has been delayed.
What do you require for a HD-DVD meet in NZ? :D

There seems to be zero presence in NZ from Toshiba with their HD-DVD players. :(
Aren't different voltages an issue when importing hardware?
The power consumption is quite low on second gen Toshibas so a small transformer should do the job nicely.



I was hoping to catch up with you on my next trip to the US but it has been delayed.
What do you require for a HD-DVD meet in NZ? :D
Please send me a PM and we can discuss the possibilities.

As for competition, well, they lost one of their big "talking points" with HDMI now being available. So if anything, they are less well off today, than they were last week. Now, if they want to go and convince the typical gamer that somehow Dolby Digital, DTS and WMA-Pro are not good quality, well, they can be my guest. Their audience is listening to MP3 players for heaven's sake and don't seem to be complaining. And never wanted a new format because they thought the audio in DVD was bad.

Amir...one of the touted advantages over BD and you yourself have argued this is the mandatory support of advanced audio codecs. Now you are praising lossy DVD quality audio. One reason to use HDMI is to allow uncompressed soundtracks at least in PCM form to an outboard receiver. Your competition in videogames allows for converting TrueHD, SACD, DD and DTS to multichannel PCM to receivers that support HDMI 1.1. You said the 360 supports HDMI 1.2a which is the revision to allow the digital transmission of SACD and DVD-Audio bitstreams. Yet now you're saying 2 channel PCM and legacy DD, DTS and WMA *only*. This is mighty confusing. :(

When LG came out and couldn't be certified HD DVD logo because of the lack of interactive support. Since the 360 add on doesn't support output of the mandatory advanced codecs like DD+ and D-THD why was it able to be certified?

Damn, as a Xbox fanboy. I must say im royaly disapointed. I bought my HD-DVD drive before i knew about audio codecs like DD+, TrueHD, DTS-HDMA. Now that i have a 5.1 setup, and a HDMI receiver i feel like im missing out with my HD-DVD drive. I had hopes of upgrading my Premium 360 to an elite 360 just so i can get uncompressed or lossless audio out of my HD-DVD player. The difference between my PS3's audio and my 360's audio is huge! And now your telling me, after the fact that i already have an HD-DVD player that you recommend getting a Toshiba HDA2 if i want uncompressed or lossless audio?
Actually, what I am really telling you is to wait for the spring software update. That should give you a big boost in audio without buying anything or spending a dime. If after that you feel that you are still missing something, then sure, a stand-alone player is the way to go.

Also keep in mind that if you are enjoying Warner/Paramount titles on PS3, they are 640kbps good old Dolby Digital so are you are not getting lossless audio there anyway.


Where were those suggestions when the HD-DVD drive first came out?!
I mentioned the same when people asked to have HDMI.

Anyway, im pretty mad. Check my post history, i sound like a Xbox/MS/HD-DVD fanboy, im always defending Xbox 360 and HD-DVD, and im always talking smack on PS3 and BD even tho i own a PS3.
We really appreciate your support. My request is to hang in there until you experience the software update. It is coming soon and it will provide you with what you might be looking for.

But now after this news...I hate to say it, but i hope the Elite 360 fails miserably, im hoping you guys underestimate the knowledge of the average consumer...But unfortunatley, i doubt the Elite will fail.
But most people don’t need the Elite for better audio. The main reason people should want it is for HDMI video connectivity. The audio will be fixed in the spring update for all of our customers. Current 360 HD DVD audio is reducing dynamic range and that makes the sound worse than it needs to be. The new software unlocks the dynamic range and will give you a pretty big boost in performance.

So please hang in there a bit longer. You have nothing to lose. The software update after all, is free :). As crazy as I am about audio, I played my first gen Toshiba player over coax with DTS for a few months before getting HDMI and enjoyed every minute of it. As did thousands of others who praised the audio performance of the player using that connection.

Amir...one of the touted "advantages" over BD and you yourself have argued this is the mandatory support of advanced audio codecs. Now you are praising lossy DVD quality audio.
I am not "praising it." I am putting it in context. Lossless audio is not and has not been for the masses. Well, you tell me. Were you suffering with your DVD movie soundtracks? And how many gamers want "lossless" version of the game soundtrack? What are they missing with synthetic audio?

Yes, I can tell the difference. So I go and buy a $10K processor to enjoy that last bit of quality. Does everyone else? Do they even have HDMI?

One reason to use HDMI is to allow uncompressed soundtracks at least in PCM form to an outboard receiver. Your competition in videogames allows for converting TrueHD, SACD, DD and DTS to multichannel PCM to receivers that support HDMI 1.1.
In case of SACD, that is the craziest thing I have heard! First they say single bit (SACD) sounds better than multi-channel (PCM/DVD-A). Then the production happens in multi-bit PCM because 1-bit editing is hard (and degrades quality). And now, they conver the output back to PCM? What is the point of SACD again? Just some way to add noise to audio to make people think they are getting better sound? :confused:

You said the 360 supports HDMI 1.2a which is the revision to allow the digital transmission of SACD and DVD-Audio bitstreams. Yet now you're saying 2 channel PCM, DD, DTS and WMA *only*. This is mighty confusing. :(
Sorry, I don't follow the question. We don't play SACD/DVD-A. 1.3 is needed to flag the newer codecs which we can't do with 1.2.

This update to VGA output... will it help with TVs that don't offer many picture adjustments
via the VGA input? My set doesn't offer sharpness for one... but the picture over VGA
always looks a little softer and more washed out it seems... does the update fix that or is
that still dependant on the television's input?

But most people don’t need the Elite for better audio.

Just curious, but where did you get that impression? I was looking forward to the Elite aka "Zephyr" for a long time because of two desires: 1) integrated HDDVD drive and 2) lossless audio.

I realize the former is fruitless due most likely to technical issues (read access speed seems most obvious to me, but if you could confirm or deny, that would be great). The latter jumped ahead when I got a Denon HDMI receiver. Before this, I did consider my 360 and PS3 at audio parity via optical to my old AVR. Since then, the PS3 has taken a definitive lead on the AQ side. Even without the grumbles about the current DD output situation.


The main reason people should want it is for HDMI video connectivity.

Is there a benefit that the Elite would offer over my current component connection other than video upscaling?

dear amirm,

I am runing my 360 at 1080p over vga so in your opinion is the pq a bit better on the 360 elite over hdmi vs. vga, and if so how is the pq better, ie sharpness,etc.

Just curious, but where did you get that impression? I was looking forward to the Elite aka "Zephyr" for a long time because of two desires: 1) integrated HDDVD drive and 2) lossless audio.
That's why I said "most people," not all :). I have fielded many, many questions on this topic. Large majority have been on video side.

I realize the former is fruitless due most likely to technical issues (read access speed seems most obvious to me, but if you could confirm or deny, that would be great).
I recall us saying that when the console launched. I thought it was an interview with my colleague Todd Holmdahl but I could not find it in a quick search. I am sure someone with more time can find it. Todd is the VP in charge of Xbox hardware development so if he has said it, it counts for something :). And yes, the continuous data rate that was higher than blue-laser drives.
The latter jumped ahead when I got a Denon HDMI receiver. Before this, I did consider my 360 and PS3 at audio parity via optical to my old AVR. Since then, the PS3 has taken a definitive lead on the AQ side. Even without the grumbles about the current DD output situation.
Again, that "lead" is probably because of the reduced fidelity of audio in the current software which has NOTHING to do with lossless versus lossy. There is a large dynamic range reduction in current software. Once that is resolved (again, at no cost to you all), I think the perception of many people will change. For the few where the expectations are still higher, then there is a player for half the price of PS3 to serve it.

Is there a benefit that the Elite would offer over my current component connection other than video upscaling?
No, if you are happy with it, you should stay with it. I am driving my Ruby with component and don’t see the need to get an Elite myself.

dear amirm,

I am runing my 360 at 1080p over vga so in your opinion is the pq a bit better on the 360 elite over hdmi vs. vga, and if so how is the pq better, ie sharpness,etc.
It is hard to say. With some displays, their analog input is softer. With others, that is not the case. In most cases, the difference would be small or non-existent.

Who said you can't get your post count by just staying in the Insider thread :D.

Maybe we can get a rest for a while from audio topic? At least 'till tomorrow?

dear amirm,

thank you alot for your honesty cause thats the main reason im goinging to trade in my exsisting 360 for an elite 360, now as i understand it i wont be able to transfer my data from my old 360 hard drive to my new one?And do you think it is wise to by a whole new 360 just for hdmi or should i wait for the dash update for the vga fixes?

Thanks for the update amirm. Unfortunately since the Elite can't output 5.1 LPCM via HDMI I no longer see any reason in upgrading my 360 to the Elite model.

I must say I'm very disappointed :(

dear amirm,

thank you alot for your honesty cause thats the main reason im goinging to trade in my exsisting 360 for an elite 360, now as i understand it i wont be able to transfer my data from my old 360 hard drive to my new one?And do you think it is wise to by a whole new 360 just for hdmi or should i wait for the dash update for the vga fixes?
Given the fact that the update is coming soon, I suggest checking that out first. It is not like you are sitting there with nothing to watch. The current box is very capable on its own and gets even better with the update. If after trying that, you still need the new box, you can check out the reviews and user feedback and then pull the trigger to upgrade the hardware.

dear amirm,

ok sounds good but just one quick question, is there a way to transer my data from my old 360 hard drive to the new elite 360 hdd?

dear amirm,

ok sounds good but just one quick question, is there a way to transer my data from my old 360 hard drive to the new elite 360 hdd?
I know it is odd but I really don't know :). I am sure someone in the gaming section would know. Just asked my son and he says that some of the data you can move, others don't seem to work. He says saved games and other settings do move over. What doesn't work he says is some of the things you buy.

ahhh i see so its a real question of wether hdmi is worth it but after trading my 360 the elite 360 is only gonna cost me 50 dollars more than buying the 120gb hdd seperatly, thats the price of a good hdmi cable, so i think im just gonna go ahead and purchase it cause on a 106 in. screen i think ill see a noticible difference between vga and hdmi mainly in sharpness.

dear amirm,

ok sounds good but just one quick question, is there a way to transer my data from my old 360 hard drive to the new elite 360 hdd?

In interviews after the announcement other MS folks said there's a transfer cable being sold with the 120GB hard drive that will allow you to transfer all your data to the new drive (but it will erase the previous drive.) Didn't sound like the transfer cable was going to come with the Elite, but they're working on a way for people who buy the Elite to transfer everything over -- perhaps the cable will be sold separately or something. If all else fails i'm sure you could get a cable off e-bay or use craigslist to find somebody who has one and isn't using it.

Amir, Guess what?! I don't have an audio question!!!

Anyway, I know I asked this before the Elite was officially announced, and you likely couldn't answer, so I am hoping I can perhaps get some more information now.

I am excited about the prospect of the 120 Gig hard drive (even if the price makes me do a triple take). I would REALLY love a feature, if I were to buy the 120GB drive, to rip my 360 games to the hard drive. At least rip the 3-5 I play regularly at the time.

As a fellow projector user, you must know that it's kind of a pain to get up and travel a ways from your comfy couch, to slap a game in from a friend request etc. I love the idea for managed copy for HD DVD's, and I am really hoping that maybe Microsoft could lead the way in this department with games before managed copy is officially settled.

Mostly, I am just hoping you can maybe mention that this is or has been considered or if it's been ruled out. Otherwise, I am hoping you can pass it on as a suggestion to the Xbox team.

Thanks for all you do!

Thanks for the update amirm. Unfortunately since the Elite can't output 5.1 LPCM via HDMI I no longer see any reason in upgrading my 360 to the Elite model.

I must say I'm very disappointed :(

Vote and Vent your frustrations here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=827835)

I't won't make any difference, but wth...

UxiSXRD wrote: Is there a benefit that the Elite would offer over my current component connection other than video upscaling?

Amir wrote: No, if you are happy with it, you should stay with it. I am driving my Ruby with component and don’t see the need to get an Elite myself.



So the Elite 360 will upscale DVD's via HDMI? Up to what resolution?

Amir, reportedly a new "super quiet" BenQ VAD6038 drive was incorporated into the pre-Elite Xbox's. If this is the drive in the Elite then that would be a plus, I'm suspecting thats the case, any way to verify? (at your convenience of course :) )

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/12718/New-DVD-Drive-Makes-Xbox-360-Super-Quiet/

This is not 100% confirmation or anything, but....
Small Kokaktu article showing Elite 360 (http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/360/elite-australian-relase-info-247682.php)

http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/03/fingers2.jpg
http://gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/02/xbox360drives.jpg

It look's like the hitachi drive in the above pic.... :confused:

When it comes to rumors, we can only comment with explicit studio permission.

But, as previously discussed, a film of that length and quality could get a great technical presentation on HD DVD. As a general matter, I'd be startled to see a BD get a longer edit, given HD DVD's proven capacity to handle very long content, and ability to use its capacity more efficiently via more advanced mandatory audio cdoecs.Perhaps you or Amir would care to illustrate how in more detail using the figures from King Kong here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10151055&&#post10151055)..... ??

Welcome back to the cauldron Amir :)

I'm guessing this got lost in the flurry of posts since your return so any chance you could address this question (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10146701&&#post10146701)??

Regards, Ian.

Hello amirm

It's wonderful to learn that there are updates to VGA HD Cable users like me.
However, please make my wish come true. :)
Are the following resolutions, 1440x900 and 1680x1050 a confirmed addition into the spring update?

And I know it's a bit of a long shot, but will 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 resolution be supported too? This two resolutions are found in the higher end LCD monitors, from two of the most popular (and expensive) brands, Dell and Apple.
Dear Amir

Sorry for being a nudge here. But did you miss this question or are you unable to respond for some reason?

If you don't have the answer or not allowed to, I'm completely fine with it. :)

I know it is odd but I really don't know . I am sure someone in the gaming section would know. Just asked my son and he says that some of the data you can move, others don't seem to work. He says saved games and other settings do move over. What doesn't work he says is some of the things you buy.

From what Albert over the Xbox department said on many podcasts in the last few days, the seperate 120 Gig HD release will come with a transfer cable, which will move all your data from your 20 gig HD to the 120 Gig HD and erase the 20gig one. For those wanting to upgrade to the elite system, they are working on a solution for that as your game content is tied to your 360 hardware.

Any insider...

What makes a clean (no scratches, no dust) optical disc not play? Is it the physical disc, the software on the disc, the hardware in the player or the software in the player?

Has the problem been mitigated in any way now with the HD DVD and blu-ray discs?

Any insider willing to comment ...

It was inevitable anyway, but the purported reason why hackers so quickly compromised the BD & HD DVD copy protection was the refusal of those software players to play full resolution over VGA and/or component video connections, even though ICT has not been turned on.

Supposedly new software players may be required after the AACS changes in the April/May time frame. Has everybody learned their lesson and decided those new PC software players may play full resolution this time on the next generation? Or will the software players still be unnessarily crippled compared to standalone players?

- Tom

PCM output is available but only for 2-channels (not 5.1). Please, please, don’t say you don’t like this. There is nothing you are going to say which we don’t know :). Our goal was to provide a digital connection for video which people wanted for some of their TVs. And of course, single cable A/V connection. So if having analog video bothered you before, you can now use digital. If you lacked component/VGA on your TV, you are in business with Xbox 360 Elite.

If you are keen on having 5.1 PCM output, I recommend purchasing the Toshiba A2 player which after the price drop, will be much cheaper than Elite.


Ahh, finally a straight answer and it also confirms all of my worries. The Elite is just a Premium with a digital audio to HDMI converter bolted in.
Now I am a little happier keeping my existing Xbox 360 because without true HDMI PCM capability, it does nothing to help me. And, hopefully, the audio upgrade in the Spring update will help the other issues so that is good news.

It now looks like the Elite was only created to answer bullet points off the back a PS3 box. It must be nice that Microsoft can say they both have HDMI when in fact the two are worlds apart audio wise. If that is the true goal, and there really isn't any technical improvements, why not release the Elite back during the PS3 launch?

Since I already have an A1, I'm not too disappointed but it would have been nice to have the XBox360 as a true HDDVD system to fall back on.

dear Amir,

does the HDMI video output of the Xbox 360 Elite support 1:1 resolutions like the VGA (for example 1366x768)? And does it upscale DVD movies to those resolutions?

I don't personally know even though I realize this has been a pain point for some users. I personally pushed the team to invetigate this issue so I know it got worked on. The problem from what I recall was the timing signal and how different companies interpret them. If I find out more, I will report back.


Amir,
Many of us that are using crt projectors with the vga connection see and know of the broken video timing issue, we see it. Some of the best in the crt projector field are using the xbox because of the clean incredible image it puts out.

But, we are hoping that this will be addressed and fixed, it would make the 360 perfect, imagewise. To take the 360 to the next level there are some mods that can be done to it to improve the image it puts out, but, I won't discuss them here. If you don't know what you are doing you could destroy your xbox.

I am using a highly moded 9" (Marquee 9500) crt projector with the 360 and just love it, and amaze anyone who happens to see it.

Amir, I hope you can look into this further and find out if they will correct the timing problem. Thanks

Amir,
Many of us that are using crt projectors with the vga connection see and know of the broken video timing issue, we see it. Some of the best in the crt projector field are using the xbox because of the clean incredible image it puts out.

But, we are hoping that this will be addressed and fixed, it would make the 360 perfect, imagewise. To take the 360 to the next level there are some mods that can be done to it to improve the image it puts out, but, I won't discuss them here. If you don't know what you are doing you could destroy your xbox.

I am using a highly moded 9" (Marquee 9500) crt projector with the 360 and just love it, and amaze anyone who happens to see it.

Amir, I hope you can look into this further and find out if they will correct the timing problem. Thanks
I am not quite sure if timing issues you speak of in this situation is fully fixed. I got an answer from the Xbox folks that there are additional resolution settings in the spring update which may help out with this. What exactly this means, I haven't had time to investigate. As I learn more, I will report back.

Perhaps you or Amir would care to illustrate how in more detail using the figures from King Kong here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10151055&&#post10151055)..... ??
I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make Ian. The video part is not a fixed number. One can fine tune it more and squeeze it down as needed. Remember that the quality curve for VC-1 is highly exponential and approaches a very horizontal asymptote quickly. So looking at the file size for video doesn’t tell you anything about what else you could put in there.

Put another way, when the bit budget is allocated for the various parts of the title, the data rate for video is dialed in and then encoding begins. Any trouble spots are then optimized. Given this process, you can’t say that the file size had to be the number that was picked. A smaller number could be picked with potentially more hand tuning needed without degradation to the movie.

As to LOTR, you can’t draw direct conclusions by looking at KK. The movies are different. They are encoded by different shops and amount of labor going into them is different. I can’t give you any details about LOTR but having read the closed thread started by beatboy, I can tell you that whoever is feeding him data, is feeding him more incorrect information than correct. There is a much more correct post later in that thread ;). And even that may turn out to be incorrect given the fact that the project is ongoing. The other thing I will hint at is that NL is really quality focused. They absolutely care about audio/video performance on this series.

Is LOTR going to be easy to encode? No. It is going to take work. As Ben pointed out though, we have shown that we can handle long length titles in HD DVD-30 with superb quality so we are no stranger to this work. Other than noting this fact, back of the envelop math on data size of other titles, etc. is going to make for long threads but provide you with little real data. If all movies behaved the same, we would have the same data rate for all of them but we don’t. Unless you are compressionist and have a ton of experience with VC-1 and have access to the master, you cannot make a-priory judgment about the quality of some title at certain data rate. After all, prior to launch of HD DVD, everyone thought the only way to get good picture was to use BD and we know clearly now that is not the case. And it has been the other guy on the defensive, having to show that they can produce good quality with their format.

Your other commentary regarding dubbed tracks is also problematic in my opinion. The consensus here and elsewhere has always been that it is the original track that has the highest fidelity and should be preserved as well as possible. Beyond that, a dubbed track simply does not need same level of quality because the mater isn’t of the same quality. This is not to say that it is less enjoyable by people listening to it. I guarantee you that the people who listened to dubbed track on that title are not complaining about the quality or I would be hearing from about it, and you would be posting a reference to it. But we have seen none. The dubbed tracks simply are not for the enthusiasts – in the original or compressed form. But to average person, they still sound great.

But let’s say you are right and there are people marching in streets, complaining about the dubbed tracks in KK. In that case, my answer is let’s use the interactivity features of HD DVD and download those tracks to persistent storage. We have mandatory networking in HD DVD so we can always rely on that. And menus in HDi dynamically update after the download, letting the user select the other tracks as if they were always there.

As I responded to Darin last week, this whole notion that everything must fit on disc or else, is an antiquated concept. With DVD, we didn’t have the internet. We do now. And we have a format in the form of HD DVD that fully provides this capability. As we have shown, HD DVD studios are pretty aggressive about using these capabilities. So while one may doubt the will of the other format to adopt anything but a straight disc format, you are not going to see us be shy here. Of course, if there is no market for a lossless dubbed Spanish track, you may not see this there. But why should we provide something where this is no market? And for whom? It is clear that you speak and understand English :).

On behalf of the masses, THANKS AMIRM!!!

Obviously alot of us were disappointed/mad after hearing your info, and some become less than polite and demanding. Yet, you continue to answer questions, mad respect for you and thanks on behalf of everyone (We know its not YOUR fault) regardless of the tone of our posts. Keep up the good work, and may the gaming gods be with you.

:) Thanks much. It is sometimes hard to read the sentiments of the majority who don't post. So appreciate the feedback.

Dear Amir

Sorry for being a nudge here. But did you miss this question or are you unable to respond for some reason?

If you don't have the answer or not allowed to, I'm completely fine with it. :)
No reason other than hitting my limit of how many questions I ask the Xbox guys over the weekend :). They tell me they have added other resolution settings. So maybe one of them is what you are interested in.

I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make Ian. The video part is not a fixed number. One can fine tune it more and squeeze it down as needed. Remember that the quality curve for VC-1 is highly exponential and approaches a very horizontal asymptote quickly. So looking at the file size for video doesn’t tell you anything about what else you could put in there.

Put another way, when the bit budget is allocated for the various parts of the title, the data rate for video is dialed in and then encoding begins. Any trouble spots are then optimized. Given this process, you can’t say that the file size had to be the number that was picked. A smaller number could be picked with potentially more hand tuning needed without degradation to the movie.

As to LOTR, you can’t draw direct conclusions by looking at KK. The movies are different. They are encoded by different shops and amount of labor going into them is different. I can’t give you any details about LOTR but having read the closed thread started by beatboy, I can tell you that whoever is feeding him data, is feeding him more incorrect information than correct. There is a much more correct post later in that thread ;). And even that may turn out to be incorrect given the fact that the project is ongoing. The other thing I will hint at is that NL is really quality focused. They absolutely care about audio/video performance on this series.

Is LOTR going to be easy to encode? No. It is going to take work. As Ben pointed out though, we have shown that we can handle long length titles in HD DVD-30 with superb quality so we are no stranger to this work. Other than noting this fact, back of the envelop math on data size of other titles, etc. is going to make for long threads but provide you with little real data. If all movies behaved the same, we would have the same data rate for all of them but we don’t. Unless you are compressionist and have a ton of experience with VC-1 and have access to the master, you cannot make a-priory judgment about the quality of some title at certain data rate. After all, prior to launch of HD DVD, everyone thought the only way to get good picture was to use BD and we know clearly now that is not the case. And it has been the other guy on the defensive, having to show that they can produce good quality with their format.

Your other commentary regarding dubbed tracks is also problematic in my opinion. The consensus here and elsewhere has always been that it is the original track that has the highest fidelity and should be preserved as well as possible. Beyond that, a dubbed track simply does not need same level of quality because the mater isn’t of the same quality. This is not to say that it is less enjoyable by people listening to it. I guarantee you that the people who listened to dubbed track on that title are not complaining about the quality or I would be hearing from about it, and you would be posting a reference to it. But we have seen none. The dubbed tracks simply are not for the enthusiasts – in the original or compressed form. But to average person, they still sound great.

But let’s say you are right and there are people marching in streets, complaining about the dubbed tracks in KK. In that case, my answer is let’s use the interactivity features of HD DVD and download those tracks to persistent storage. We have mandatory networking in HD DVD so we can always rely on that. And menus in HDi dynamically update after the download, letting the user select the other tracks as if they were always there.

As I responded to Darin last week, this whole notion that everything must fit on disc or else, is an antiquated concept. With DVD, we didn’t have the internet. We do now. And we have a format in the form of HD DVD that fully provides this capability. As we have shown, HD DVD studios are pretty aggressive about using these capabilities. So while one may doubt the will of the other format to adopt anything but a straight disc format, you are not going to see us be shy here. Of course, if there is no market for a lossless dubbed Spanish track, you may not see this there. But why should we provide something where this is no market? And for whom? It is clear that you speak and understand English :).

Amir -

Instead of downloading, is their any provision for preloading another audio track from a second disc? It seems that even a 1 mbps second language audio track could be loaded at over 30x real time. Thus for a 3 hour (180 minute) movie you could have many extra language tracks all on a 2nd (DVD-9?) disc if needed. And any selected track could be pre-loaded from that disc in about 5-6 minutes, even for folks with slow Internet connections. Heck, if the concern was max bandwidth instead of disc capacity that preloading could even be done from the first disc if the extra audio files were not muxed in but packed separately at the back.

- Tom

amirm, I know you can't comment on products in development, but would it be possible for you to comment on the ability of the Elite to support lossless audio in the future (either through a software update, or perhaps a new Elite version of the HDDVD add-on)?

If it is not physically possible at any point in the future, due to hardware constraints inside the Elite, I would like to know. In that case, I will buy a stand alone HDDVD player.

Also, could you please clear up a question related to the Spring audio update. Is the Spring update for audio only for HDDVD movies, or will it also upgrade the sound for games? Specifically, what audio can we get for each. Do we get DTS 1.5M for both? But it isn't 5.1? I assume thats the best the Elite will be able to put out?

Again, thanks for taking the time to answer everyone's questions in this forum. It means a lot to us...

Amir -

Instead of downloading, is their any provision for preloading another audio track from a second disc? It seems that even a 1 mbps second language audio track could be loaded at over 30x real time. Thus for a 3 hour (180 minute) movie you could have many extra language tracks all on a 2nd (DVD-9?) disc if needed. And any selected track could be pre-loaded from that disc in about 5-6 minutes, even for folks with slow Internet connections. Heck, if the concern was max bandwidth instead of disc capacity that preloading could even be done from the first disc if the extra audio files were not muxed in but packed separately at the back.

- Tom
Hey, that would work too! Great suggestion...

That's weird...According to the poll below, 77% of the voters in the HD-DVD forum are not getting the Elite because it does not output uncompressed/lossless audio. I know poll's are not 100% accurate, but c'mon, 99% huh..
You did a poll on how many people asked me about HDMI? I am getting older but I don't think I need a poll to remind me what questions people have asked me :).

Regardless, I appreciate your passion. I really do. I just wish you would wait a few weeks to try out the software update and see what people think after that.

amirm, I know you can't comment on products in development, but would it be possible for you to comment on the ability of the Elite to support lossless audio in the future (either through a software update, or perhaps a new Elite version of the HDDVD add-on)?

If it is not physically possible at any point in the future, due to hardware constraints inside the Elite, I would like to know. In that case, I will buy a stand alone HDDVD player.

Also, could you please clear up a question related to the Spring audio update. Is the Spring update for audio only for HDDVD movies, or will it also upgrade the sound for games? Specifically, what audio can we get for each. Do we get DTS 1.5M for both? But it isn't 5.1? I assume thats the best the Elite will be able to put out?

Again, thanks for taking the time to answer everyone's questions in this forum. It means a lot to us...

Keeping in mind that I didn't design the Xbox 360 hardware or manage its development, I don't think it is wise to wait for PCM update when you can pick up a cheaper HD DVD player which has it now.

On spring update, it is only for HD DVD. Changing the encoder for games would modify the performance profile of the machine (due to different load of various encoders) which is not something we wanted to do as that may impact gaming performance. Of course, it is possible in the future to add this functionality after more testing and possibly more optizimations. But for now, there is no plan around it.

So here are the specs:

Gaming: current Dolby Digital 5.1 encoder. No change.

For HD DVD:
Stereo uncompressed PCM
Current Dolby Digital (5.1)
DTS at 1.5 Mbit/sec (5.1)
WMA-Pro at 1.5 mbit/sec (5.1)

There is a new dashboard UI that lets you select the above choices and turn the dynamic range compression on/off (currently it is stuck in ON position).

Hello Amirm, you've given us all some fantastic information and just by reading this thread it made me want to sign up for the forums here. Wow! A topic thats 111 pages long that isn't a massive burning wreck? This must be a nice place!

Anyway, I know you've kinda already gone into this sorta....but if you could somehow confirm 1680x1050 VGA support I will be the first in line to donate my kidney to you when one of them bursts from the frustration of being asked the same questions over and over again :) I understand it's the weekend so it might be impossible for you to find out....but hey, worth a shot I guess...maybe?

Back to the importing thing - do the US toshibas work in 50Hz mode? If not then that would be a problem when importing one since you wouldn't be able to play back titles released in that format for current PAL countries (europe/australia).

Hey Amir,

I've been reading this forum for a long time and I've found your feedback to be very helpful and insightful...now it's time for my first post. I don't know if this is out of your scope, but I hope you can help. I have a panasonic 50" plasma and I really like the music streaming feature of the 360. The problem is that the current visualizer has a .5" letter box band at the top and bottom, so I'm concerned about burn in. Do you know if there's anything I can do to fix this or if the team is considering adding a feature to stretch the visualizer (like you can do with arcade games)? Also, do you know if they're going to be offering any new visualizers - I tried out Apple TV and really liked the photo screen saver effect (different from a standard slideshow); I returned the ATV though cause the 360 did everything except read the DRM'ed
music...which isn't much of a problem anymore thanks to some helpful tools ;)

One more question...are there any plans to include native support for streaming non-DRMed AAC (.m4a)? It plays off an iPod but not streamed over the network. I just installed TVersity (which transcodes to other formats to wma on the fly) and that's doing the job for now (including supporting playlists), but it's hogging the CPU on my PC (and annoying my wife). I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Prev

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Amir:

I understand the lossy vs. lossless codec arguement, but doesn't the 1.2 HDMI profile allow for some pretty high bit-rate codecs that you could add to the HD DVD playback software down the road?

For example, DTS-HD, according to this chart (http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/5577/untitledjr5.jpg), can output up to 6mbps over HDMI 1.2. I would think that would be more than enough to put up against a lossless stream. Any thoughts on moving in that direction as time goes on?

Amir:

I understand the lossy vs. lossless codec arguement, but doesn't the 1.2 HDMI profile allow for some pretty high bit-rate codecs that you could add to the HD DVD playback software down the road?

For example, DTS-HD, according to this chart (http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/5577/untitledjr5.jpg), can output up to 6mbps over HDMI 1.2. I would think that would be more than enough to put up against a lossless stream. Any thoughts on moving in that direction as time goes on?
I guess that is a possibility. But until there are DTS-HD decoders out there that can go above 1.5 mbit/sec, it doesn't make sense to support it (nor would we have a way to test it).

This update to VGA output... will it help with TVs that don't offer many picture adjustments
via the VGA input? My set doesn't offer sharpness for one... but the picture over VGA
always looks a little softer and more washed out it seems... does the update fix that or is
that still dependant on the television's input?

I'm wondering this myself, Amir. Thanks for listening.

This update to VGA output... will it help with TVs that don't offer many picture adjustments
via the VGA input? My set doesn't offer sharpness for one... but the picture over VGA
always looks a little softer and more washed out it seems... does the update fix that or is
that still dependant on the television's input?
Unfortunately, there are no "proc amp" controls of this sort that I know of. Best to see if your TV supports seperate memories for different inputs and dial in the appropriate amount there.

Will the Xbox 360 Elite be capable of 1:1 pixel mapping with the HDMI output?

Will the Xbox 360 Elite be capable of 1:1 pixel mapping with the HDMI output?
Say what? 1:1 pixel mapping is an issue with the receiver, not transmitter. If your display can do it, then it works with any source, 360 or otherwise.

People should always look for this feature when they buy a new display. It is called "native" mode, or "direct" mode or some such thing. If you don't see it in the menu, skip the unit and keep looking for one that does.

Without 1:1, the display will attempt to enlarge the image by 5-10%, causing the image to become softer in addition to losing picture detail on each side.

Hmmm, thanks for the quick answer. Let me get one follow up in then, because I'm just trying to wrap my head around the PCM issue as well. It was my understanding, and I could be off goodness knows, that you could pass an uncompressed stream through the 1.2 profile without limiting it to a 2.0 track. If the Xbox 360 could simply decode an LPCM or re-encode say a True-HD track to uncompressed LPCM that you could send it out to a receiver that way?

Let me qualify this. I'm right now limited to optical because of my HT setup. But there is a possibility of a new receiver this year. At this point I'd get something with HDMI onboard. That would open me up to a 360 upgrade as well.

Feel free to correct whatever I am missing in this. And thanks again!
The answer is a few pages back :). Yes, HDMI 1.2 allows uncompressed PCM. But the 360 data path to that bridge is not wide enough to support it.

HDMI will work with your new receiver by the way. You will be able to select DTS at 1.5 mbit/sec which should sound pretty good although no better than optical out.

Just to clarify, I think the people asking about 1:1 mapping are wondering whether the 360 will support resolutions and framerates other than ATSC using the HDMI output. Will 1366x768 be a possible resolution using it for instance?

Just to clarify, I think the people asking about 1:1 mapping are wondering whether the 360 will support resolutions and framerates other than ATSC using the HDMI output. Will 1366x768 be a possible resolution using it for instance?
There are no new updates here. So whatever is there in the fall update that allowed 1080p, is what is supported. This is list is not supposed to be comprehensive but is what I found for "DVI/IT" class displays:

640x480
848x480
1280x720
1024x768
1280x768
1360x768
1280x1024
1920x1080

For devices which identify themselves as "DVI/CE", just the standard ATSC rates are supported (480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p). What classifies as IT/CE is a bit complicated but we query the display to see which class it thinks it is and then double check its resolution EDID against the above list to determine for sure.

Folks create the mess above and then come and complain about having two optical formats :eek:.

Hi, does the Elite 360 have new software for video playback? Just wondering if this was changed or not with the new digital output and scaler.

benwaggoner wrote:

No, since neither lossless codec is mandatory or de-factor standard in BD players.

So even if a lossless track is included, lossy tracks must also be included.

For example, many BD discs include an AC-3 @ 640 and a PCM track, while a HD DVD version of that same title could include a 1.5 Mbps DD+ track for an equivalent or superior experience at less than 25% of the bitrate.


Actually, don't BD players all decode a "core" legacy stream out of both Dolby Digital TrueHD and DTS-HD MA signals? In the case of Dolby Digital TrueHD the "core" (not provided on HD DVD) is a separate stream from the MLP-based TrueHD encode so yes, technically this could be argued to be less efficient than a Dolby TrueHD stream on HD DVD which relies on trascoding to DTS in current players for those without HDMI output (since no core DD stream is provided). But DTS-HD also provides a legacy "core" output for all listeners from BD playback... so I fail to see how a separate lossy track needs to be included?

On BD simply providing a Lossless Dolby TrueHD stream (bundled with its core stream) or DTS-HD stream provides exceptional sound to all listeners from all BD players (even if not fully decoded to lossless). Could you please explain why your comments seem to ignore this fact?

To the my ears and those of my audiophile friends, DTS at 1.5 mbps sounds better than DD+ at 1.5, so again I fail to see, given that BD can provide exceptional sound at a 1.5 mbps rate using DTS, how is it a less-efficient format than HD DVD utilizing DD+ at 1.5 mbps?

Or are your generally stated comments about the efficiency of HD DVD/BD limited to the specific context of Dolby Digital Plus/TrueHD?

Say what? 1:1 pixel mapping is an issue with the receiver, not transmitter.Not all video sources are really capable of 1:1 pixel mapping since some actually crop pixels on the sides of the images. To rephrase my question will the Xbox 360 be capable of 1:1 pixel mapping without cropping any pixels?

Hi Amir
If I was to say "not this week but next week?"
Could you say yes or no...... because I could mean anything..... ;)

Actually, don't BD players all decode a "core" legacy stream out of both Dolby Digital TrueHD and DTS-HD MA signals?
Can't tell who you are quoting :). But Dolby THD does not have a concept of a "core." It is just an MLP codec like it is in HD DVD. The difference is that in BD, they mandate a standard dolby digital track to go with it. In HD DVD we do not, and as such, we get to choose to have DTS, DD+, etc.

DTS-HD-MA is a true core+extension codec and acts the same in both formats.


In the case of Dolby Digital TrueHD the "core" (not provided on HD DVD) is a separate stream from the MLP-based TrueHD encode so yes, technically this could be argued to be less efficient than a Dolby TrueHD stream on HD DVD which relies on trascoding to DTS in current players for those without HDMI output (since no core DD stream is provided). But DTS-HD also provides a legacy "core" output for all listeners from BD playback... so I fail to see how a separate lossy track needs to be included?
I am not quite following your argument :). But since there is no mandatory "core" in HD DVD's use of TrueHD, and all players decode TrueHD, one could leave out the backward compatible codec and save space that way.

To the my ears and those of my audiophile friends, DTS at 1.5 mbps sounds better than DD+ at 1.5, so again I fail to see, given that BD can provide exceptional sound at a 1.5 mbps rate using DTS, how is it a less-efficient format than HD DVD utilizing DD+ at 1.5 mbps?
You mean to your ear 1.5 mbit/sec DTS sounds "exceptional" but DD+ at 1.5 mbit/sec does not? And regardless, if that is exceptional, then I assume you are not a fan of lossless audio? If so, what verb would you use to describe that experience? :confused:

Of course, the additional bandwidth and datacapacity of BD more-than-offset the gain in "efficiency" of Dolby TrueHD on HD DVD (ie, even with the added 640 "core", BD ends up with more bits to spare).
Only if all of your BD discs are BD-50. That is not the case today.

Amir,

Re-read my post. I know that The "core" 640 dolby track of "Dolby TrueHD" on BD is an additional stream not intrinsic to the MLP base encode. I mention that. My point was that benwaggoner was suggesting that one needed to provide additional lossy tracks on BD since advanced audio decoding wasn't required... which seems a strange play on words given that the lossy 640 "core" *is* a requirement on BD for Dolby TrueHD streams.
Boy, I don't understand what you are getting at :). So let me ask you this. Which system you like better? One that forces you to always use an older companion codec with your lossless one or one that lets you choose? And which system is better, the one that mandates lossless decode or the one that doesn't?

Yes, the Lossy DTS streams behave the same way.
They do? How? DTS uses a smart encoding of the two layers and acts very differently than DD+THD.

Naturally lossless is preferred above all else. My point about the sound of 1.5 mbps DTS was in comparison to 1.5 mbps DD+. If any disc producer considered a 1.5 mbps DD+ stream acceptable for his disc, then I fail to see why HD DVD offers an advantage with that Dolby datarate given that equal-or-better sound quality can be obtained with DTS running at the same rate...
DD+ is not limited to 1.5 mbit/sec. It can go higher if needed. As such, it can outperform the standard DTS decoder in BD format if one goes by bitrate alone. The fact that both DTS and DD+ are standard in HD DVD most definitely gives it an advantage.

Now if disc producers would stop applying dialog normalization to their Dolby Digital encodes (lossless or otherwise)... perhaps my preference for DTS would change...

;)
Oh, you mean your preference was due to level normalization and not the supriority of DTS algorithm? Wish you had said that before. So if normalization is taken away from TrueHD/DD+, you now agree that HD DVD is better off since both of those layers are mandatory there and not in BD? Assume you know that nothing in HD DVD mandates DD/DD+/DTHD encode to work one way or the other.

Really, I don't understand how you consider BD just as good. HD DVD mandates two more codecs than BD. That ought to provide more flexibility than not. No BD disc can have a single lossless codec and expect it to play everywhere. Whereas in HD DVD, we clearly can do that. That is efficiency. Not big efficiency. But good enough for an Internet argument :).

I'm a bit confused here.
Dialog normalisation, isn't that only a metadata value, that you apply (together with compression profile), in the encoder, but is only altering the sound, IF you enable it in the interface of the decoder?
So simply a post decode compressor, that you can set the threshold of in the encoder.

So there is no difference in the encode between it set to -31db (off) and any other value, just the metadata will change?

And if the user disables "Nightmode" in the decoder, it will sound exactly the same as the normalization set to -31db?

Following up on an oft asked question, looks like the wheels are in motion in DVD Forum to study Toshiba's triple layer, 51 gigabyte HD DVD disc. Don't have more information than this to share in public. But just thought you all want to know :).

Hey, that would work too! Great suggestion...
Tom always has solid ideas & comments.

Following up on an oft asked question, looks like the wheels are in motion in DVD Forum to study Toshiba's triple layer, 51 gigabyte HD DVD disc. Don't have more information than this to share in public. But just thought you all want to know :).
Hi Amirm,
Does that mean its been submitted for testing for a possible stamp of approval, or just that they will take a closer look at it?
Thanks

There are no new updates here. So whatever is there in the fall update that allowed 1080p, is what is supported. This is list is not supposed to be comprehensive but is what I found for "DVI/IT" class displays:

640x480
848x480
1280x720
1024x768
1280x768
1360x768
1280x1024
1920x1080

For devices which identify themselves as "DVI/CE", just the standard ATSC rates are supported (480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p). What classifies as IT/CE is a bit complicated but we query the display to see which class it thinks it is and then double check its resolution EDID against the above list to determine for sure.

Folks create the mess above and then come and complain about having two optical formats :eek:.

Darn it... I was hoping for new resolutions to be added for the VGA like 1440x900 and 1680x1050 which are native to the majority of mainstream LCD monitors.

Hi Amirm,
Does that mean its been submitted for testing for a possible stamp of approval, or just that they will take a closer look at it?
Thanks
Closer to later.

Naturally, *all things being equal*, the required Dolby Digital decoding in HD DVD player designs is "better" design and one I wish the BD camp had rallies the guts to force on the manufacturers. However, there are many issues that make the context *not equal*. If we're going to talk about the most foward-oriented format, one that provides more than enough bit-rate and bandwidth to easily accomodate the added 640 core ends providing a greater all-around solution (more bits) despite the redunant lossy track.
Well, the more "forward looking" format has made networking standard so that you can have open ended capacity and bandwidth. 50 audio tracks that can be downloaded to secondary storage only take the bandwidth of one audio codec. In this respect, HD DVD is way ahead of any other optical format -- both in execution and thought leadership.

But would you suggest that it would be to a consumer's advantage to trade in 20 gigs of space and reduce his data-bandwidth in order to avoid having a core 640 stream on his software?
That consumer isn't getting an extra 20 gigabytes. Right now, more often they are losing 5 gigabytes because BD-50s are so difficult to manufacture. And I wonder, if the premium of BD-50 was passed on to users, how many of them would opt to pay for it versus HD DVD-30 to get whatever extra bandwidth or quality they think they are getting. Something to think about as one dreams of free storage. Nothing is free, certainly not in the case of 0.1 mm recording.

In a year's time when advanced audio decoding for all flavors of Dolby Digital and DTS appear in players from both sides of the format fence, these debates about the proposed advantages of requried decoding will become moot.
There is no assurance that DTS is on a path to be standard in the manner you speak. In either format. Certainly not in a "year."

Anyway, we are getting argumentative. I thought it was a good diversion from the 360 topic for a bit :). But let's get back to other topics...

Hey Amir,

Any word on the Elite 360 being able to upscale DVD's via HDMI? If so, up to what resolution? Sorry if your looking into that, and have not gotten an answer yet.

I just confirmed that a lot of fixes have been made for Sony LCDs. So hopefully you are good to go, with both analog and digital connections here.

Amir, What is the verdict for the Sony SXRD XBR2 RPTV's can we expect it to work@1080P? Don't let them forget about all of us! Here are the specs again for the VGA and what has been said about the issue:

Sony XBR2 RPTV VGA Input supports:
1920x1080
horiz frequency-67.5 khz
vertical frequncy-60 Hz
input does not support Sync on Green or Composite Sync

Here is what has been said about the problem:

-360 is sending Sync on Green
-The XBR2 is looking for a: 1920x1080, 60Hz Vert, 67.5kHz Hor.
-The 360 is providing: 1920x1080, 60Hz Vert, 66.9kHz
Hor.

-For 1080p over VGA the TV needs 67.8hrz and the X360 outputs its 1080p signal at 66.7hrz

-MS's VGA output does not support DDC standards
----

If you can get that info to the right 360 team that would be great, would like to know if it's possible for them to fix the VGA output without hosing other displays...

Have quite a few questions in regards to WMA-Pro as I've been able to decode it with my AV Receiver but have never used it.

Ben or Amir, in terms of WMA-Pro, can you please clarify what makes it more advanced than other common codecs?

Specifically, where does it line up it terms of fidelity comparison with Uncompressed PCM, MLP (DVD-A/Dolby TrueHD), DTS HD-MA, DD+, DTS-HD@3Mbps, DTS-HD@1.5Mbps, DD, DTS, AIFF, WAV, Apple lossless? (Please point out if your rankings are factual based on spectrum analysis or personal from experience)

Is the WMA-Pro we will see on the 360 an option to convert audio to over optical the same "Windows Media Lossless" version we see as an option to burn with under the windows media player?

If it is, I would like to know why it's called lossless, and what the differences are between wma, wma variable, and wma lossless (are these all version 9)?

Specifically what bitrate can we expect with each variation, and is the lossless bit for bit the same as the original source or is it perceptively lossless (kinda of like what Ben believes DD+ achieves for Movie soundtracks)?

What is the max bit-rate of WMA-Pro, what's the ceiling of dimishing returns as far as improving results, and how is it more of an advanced audio codec than MLP?

Is it more advanced because of the way it throws out information an compresses data to give the perception of lossless?

Okay I think I've reached my quota for this post :D

Amir,

Really enjoyable thread to read. Thanks for your straightforward, honest answers and dedication to answering so many questions. I have one for you regarding VGA timings. Does MS have plans to expose some sort of UI for choosing a VGA refresh rate? This may relate to the problem the poster above me was talking about with the 360's VGA cable not obeying DDC information?

I have a 27" LCD with a native res of 1280x720, which I like because I can use the 360 without scaling like I would need to with a 1366x768 set.

Anyway, its 1280x720 mode actually uses a refresh rate of 75 Hz. The 360 appears to only work at 60Hz, so when I connect the two, I do get a normal picture but it is badly overscanned (and I cannot alter the image size/position with the monitor's controls). If I had the ability to choose 75 Hz the problem would go away (I have attached a PC to the port and duplicated the behavior when forcing 60Hz using the video card control panel. The computer though does read the DDC information and correctly chooses 75 Hz by default).

I realize that a broad choice of 60Hz refresh will work for most LCDs out there, but someone with a CRT monitor would also probably prefer the ability to increase refresh rate, as 60 Hz exhibits noticeable flicker on those displays.

If it's too complicated to expose to most users--any chance of putting it in a hidden menu of some sort?

Thanks again for your great posts here.

Amir, What is the verdict for the Sony SXRD XBR2 RPTV's can we expect it to work@1080P? Don't let them forget about all of us! Here are the specs again for the VGA and what has been said about the issue:

Sony XBR2 RPTV VGA Input supports:
1920x1080
horiz frequency-67.5 khz
vertical frequncy-60 Hz
input does not support Sync on Green or Composite Sync

Here is what has been said about the problem:

-360 is sending Sync on Green
-The XBR2 is looking for a: 1920x1080, 60Hz Vert, 67.5kHz Hor.
-The 360 is providing: 1920x1080, 60Hz Vert, 66.9kHz
Hor.

-For 1080p over VGA the TV needs 67.8hrz and the X360 outputs its 1080p signal at 66.7hrz

-MS's VGA output does not support DDC standards
----

If you can get that info to the right 360 team that would be great, would like to know if it's possible for them to fix the VGA output without hosing other displays...
Sure. I will pass on.

Have quite a few questions in regards to WMA-Pro as I've been able to decode it with my AV Receiver but have never used it.

Ben or Amir, in terms of WMA-Pro, can you please clarify what makes it more advanced than other common codecs?

Specifically, where does it line up it terms of fidelity comparison with Uncompressed PCM, MLP (DVD-A/Dolby TrueHD), DTS HD-MA, DD+, DTS-HD@3Mbps, DTS-HD@1.5Mbps, DD, DTS, AIFF, WAV, Apple lossless? (Please point out if your rankings are factual based on spectrum analysis or personal from experience)
WMA Pro algorithm is not public so I cannot talk about the details in the algorithm. In general however, our design goal was 2X more efficiency than DD/DTS. In double blind tests at 760 kbps, we matched the performance of DTS at 1.5 mbit/sec for example (5.1).

WMA Pro supports both lossy and lossless encoding. It will dynamically switch between the two as necessary but you can force it to encode strictly in lossless mode.

Like VC-1, WMA-Pro uses more advanced techniques which require more MIPS, but generate better efficiency.

Is the WMA-Pro we will see on the 360 an option to convert audio to over optical the same "Windows Media Lossless" version we see as an option to burn with under the windows media player?
Yes, and no. The lossless mode in WMP is indeed a subset of WMA Pro algorithm. WMA Pro however, goes beyond that, with support for 7.1 channels and 24-bit, 96khz support and lossy/lossless encoding.

If it is, I would like to know why it's called lossless, and what the differences are between wma, wma variable, and wma lossless (are these all version 9)?
There are two codecs in play here. Standard WMA and a different lossless codec. Encoding modes are as follows:

WMA. Standard CBR mode. You set the bit rate, the codec attempts to match it by varying quality. Good for streaming content on the web where you want a constant data rate.

WMA VBR. You set the quality, the codec picks the data rate. Since the quality stays constant (according to the codec's internal measurement), your ear will find it much harder to detect distortion. Note that if you set the quality to 100, you are telling the codec to reproduce the quality of the source. The output is still lossy, but should match the quality of the input. This is called perceptual lossy encoding. It averages 4:1 compression whereas true lossless gets 2:1. The difference in quality is very small here but of course, the cost in storage and bandwidth is not. Go ahead and test this and compare it to WMA Lossless. Also note that many portable audio players can handle WMA/WMA VBR but not lossless.

WMA Lossless. Per above, this is a subset of WMA Pro and other than name, has nothing to do with WMA. It is a true lossless codec like MLP/TrueHD. Its data rate by definition is variable with average in 2:1 range although this is content dependent. My recommendation for people ripping their music is to use this codec given the low cost of storage these days.

Specifically what bitrate can we expect with each variation, and is the lossless bit for bit the same as the original source or is it perceptively lossless (kinda of like what Ben believes DD+ achieves for Movie soundtracks)?
WMA Lossless is bit by bit identical. But please keep in mind that reading a CD is a non-deterministic process in data mode. That is, WMA Lossless does indeed reproduce every bit the media player feeds it. But whether the media player always reads every bit correctly is up for grabs (regardless of whose media player we are talking about). Using the right DVD player helps a lot here.

WMA at 128kbps achieves a level of quality that 95% of the people think is the same as the source. Once you get to 256kbps, this number is probably at 99%.

WMA VBR at Q100 is very, very transparent. Data rates using 4:1 number is in the 300-400Kbps range. With all the codec testing I have done over the years, I can still pick it from the original on my expensive equipment but most people will not be able to do the same (I know what to look for).

What is the max bit-rate of WMA-Pro, what's the ceiling of dimishing returns as far as improving results, and how is it more of an advanced audio codec than MLP?
I don’t believe we have a limit to the bit rate for WMA Pro (there is probably one but it is high enough to not matter). Per above, at 750kbps and higher, its quality is excellent. So going past this point you are in dimishing return domain (for 5.1, 24-bit/48khz). In its lossless mode, from what I recall, we outperform MLP a bit but the difference is small (and of course, the quality identical).

One small note here: all the encoders in 360 are running in real-time. As such, their performance is somewhat different than off-line software encoder which can take their time encoding.

Is it more advanced because of the way it throws out information an compresses data to give the perception of lossless?
Again, I can’t disclose the algorithm. But suffice it to say, we use more advanced techniques to code the audio which while more CPU intensive, produce better efficiency (and better quality at the same data rate).

In double blind tests at 760 kbps, we matched the performance of DTS at 1.5 mbit/sec for example (5.1).
WMA Pro however, goes beyond that, with support for 7.1 channels and 24-bit, 96khz support and lossy/lossless encoding.

So going past this point you are in dimishing return domain (for 5.1, 24-bit/48khz). In its lossless mode, from what I recall, we outperform MLP a bit but the difference is small (and of course, the quality identical).

One small note here: all the encoders in 360 are running in real-time. As such, their performance is somewhat different than off-line software encoder which can take their time encoding.


Thanks for the info. Sounds like WMA-Pro on the 360 will be a lossy encode@ 1.5Mbps...question is will it upconvert all encodes@ 24/96 ala DTS encode on first gen Toshibas regardless of whether the source is 16/48, 20/48, 24/48? Does it differ over HDMI vs. Optical? Elite vs. 360?

Since the encode is done real-time on the 360, it sounds that you are hinting it would do a better job off-line. Would it be fair to say the DTS real-time encoder is more efficient, that there would be no difference with quality of the re-encode real-time vs. offline? Sounds like WMA-Pro requires more cycles to achieve optimal results...I suppose we will be able to compare.

Will the DTS@ 1.5Mbps re-encode be done at 24/48 or 24/96 over HDMI? What about optical?

Can you specify the max re-encode format bits, and channels for HDMI and optical?

One other note, I notice that current 360 has a WMA output option, is that suppose to do a re-encode, or just flag native output for any media that has a WMA encode track?

I was not talking about HDMI data path. But internal data path in 360 for audio on the way out to HDMI bridge.

I guess I need to go through another 6000 posts before people assume that I know what HDMI can or cannot do :).


Amir, since the guys over at the Gaming Group decided on how to implement HDMI for the Elite, is it possible that you can get Tom Holmdahl or someone else to come over and address some of our concerns. The board had to be revised to add HDMI and digital scaling right? Why not make the necessary revisions for the audio side to output lossless at the same time?

"Answering other questions, both Xbox 360 Elite and current Xbox 360 units will have a spring (console) update which adds support for different video levels for VGA output (“7.5 IRE vs 0”). And as someone mentioned, using this setting you should be able to use computer monitors in addition to TVs with resolutions all the way up to 1080p with high fidelity and no issues with HDCP handshaking. So for current users, I highly recommend trying this update with your VGA connection to see if it does the job for you. Note that this is a console update and will work for both games and of course, HD DVD. The HD DVD software update is separate from this (and will be available on both Xbox Live)."



Sorry, Amir, I'm trying to wrap my noobish brain around this part of your post and I have a question to ask about it. Does this mean we will see an improvement with the current resolutions, or will there be more resolution options added?

Thanks for all informations.
Sorry for the question, but is it possible for microsoft to design an interface or cable or anything to add HDMI port on Premium and Core systems ?
I think this isn't possible but I'm not a professional on this thing.
Thanks

Amir,

was WMA Pro ever considered as an audio codec for HD DVD or BD given its advances in efficiency? I presume the increased efficiency is during lossy encodes with lossless capture roughtly on-par with MLP designs?

Amir, What is the verdict for the Sony SXRD XBR2 RPTV's can we expect it to work@1080P? Don't let them forget about all of us! Here are the specs again for the VGA and what has been said about the issue:

Sony XBR2 RPTV VGA Input supports:
1920x1080
horiz frequency-67.5 khz
vertical frequncy-60 Hz
input does not support Sync on Green or Composite Sync

Here is what has been said about the problem:

-360 is sending Sync on Green
-The XBR2 is looking for a: 1920x1080, 60Hz Vert, 67.5kHz Hor.
-The 360 is providing: 1920x1080, 60Hz Vert, 66.9kHz
Hor.

-For 1080p over VGA the TV needs 67.8hrz and the X360 outputs its 1080p signal at 66.7hrz
...


A related question came up at work last week and I couldn't remember the answer. It seems that the ATSC broadcast digital TV standard allows both 60 Hz and the NTSC color TV compatible multiples of 29.97 Hz (ratio 1000/1001). But I could [edit: could not] remember which is actually used in practice for most HD broadcast.

Do hidef DVD players's also have a similar issue? Or do they specify exactly 60 Hz?

- Tom

Amir,

Will or do the Xbox 360's stereo analog connections give us any of the lossless codecs like True-HD?

Amir,
Hoping for the VGA fix for my Sharp G7 1080p lcd TV too, which is currently limited only with 720p resolution....pls dont forget about Sharp 1080p users too....

Thanks

Amir, great to see another employee of Microsoft serving the community!! I have 2 simple questions.

1. Is the 360 designed in such a way, that codecs for example DivX(HD), MPEG or other licensed and/or future (HD) formats can be downloaded/bought via Marketplace and used by the 360 for video playback? Or is this a closed part of the system and can codecs and decoders only be added via major seasonal updates? Cause this would solve all licensing issues/fees. Free codecs can be download via Marketplace for free and ones that require a license, mpeg with Fraunhofer e.a., can be bought per xbox via Marketplace with points if a user wants it. Solving any licensing issues which may arrise when adding codecs for video playback. Would this be possible with the current Marketplace and how the 360 is designed to playback video/audio, to inject codecs via Marketplace into the system?

2. Does the internal videoconverter(chip) support over/underscan adjustments to be made when outputting via component? Cause not all tv's support over/underscan adjustments to be made.


Amir, thanks in advance for awnsering/considering these questions. Keep up the good work!

--SNIP--


Only HD DVD. Messing with gaming is harder because they have a strict MIPS budget for the console itself while the game is running. So we can't just throw in new encoders and expect the games to stay compatible.


--SNIP--
Amir, I snipped out the rest of the paragraph, but you were stating that there were 3 options for sound via the pending HD-DVD Update & you pointed to your initial answer. However, could you, please, be a little more specific. You explicilty mentioned the Elite when referring to the new DTS & WMA support.

I am assuming that this applies to the current 360, but could you state that please?

edit: I see Amir gave the answer in post 3209 (which is yes,)

Hi Amir,

If you can't comment on this, I understand, but I just thought I'd ask anyways.

There seem to be a lot of problems with combo discs recently (people are reporting problems with Children of Men, Happy Feet, and most recently, The Good Shepherd.) At the same time this is happening, Universal seems to be packing it in on combos (to some extent at least.) I'm not particularly a fan of combo discs, but do you have any idea what it going on?

I picked up Happy Feet, and I'm kind of having problems with it on my 360 HD drive. It froze/stuttered at the 28:49 mark (the exact point where lots of people have reported the same thing), but when I went back to it afterwards, it played through fine. I would have thought it was an isolated incident, except as I said,other people have had the exact same problem at the exact same point on both the 360 and the XA2 (they say with latest firmware)

People have discovered what seems to be a workaround for the XA2 (thread 827688 on this board, sorry, I can't include the full link because I'm new here):

showthread.php?t=827688

I guess my questions are, is there a problem with combo discs (physical or otherwise) or is Happy Feet doing something to cause some sort of general buffering problem?

When it first stuttered on me, my I thought I'd be exchanging it (a defective copy), but then i couldn't reproduce it, yet others have reported the exact same thing, and not just on the 360.

Strange, no?

Thoughts on all this? :)

Thanks in advance,
Stuart

A related question came up at work last week and I couldn't remember the answer. It seems that the ATSC broadcast digital TV standard allows both 60 Hz and the NTSC color TV compatible multiples of 29.97 Hz (ratio 1000/1001). But I could remember which is actually used in practice for most HD broadcast.

Do hidef DVD players's also have a similar issue? Or do they specify exactly 60 Hz?

While ATSC allows integer frame rates, I've not seen them used in practice. All real-world "video" framerates in NTSC countries use the 0.1% slowdown, so when we say "30p" we really mean 30/1.001, which we round to 29.97 (but it's really 29.9700002997...). Similarly, "24p" is really 24/1.001.

An article by the inquirer says;

Additionally, when using HDMI the resolution on the 360 will be forced to 1080p, regardless of the display resolution of the device it is actually being connected to, which could result in unnecessary image downscaling or, at worst, lack of picture.

Is this correct? Now I have a TV that does 480p/720p/1080i only. I'm assuming I will still be able to utilize HDMI and 720p/1080i, right?

Universal is now pricing their combos without a premium. And gradually replacing their catalog combos with non-combos at lower prices.

An article by the inquirer says;



Is this correct? Now I have a TV that does 480p/720p/1080i only. I'm assuming I will still be able to utilize HDMI and 720p/1080i, right?
I can't make sense of what they are saying there. Many TVs don't even accept 1080p so it is silly to say we force that output timing. Do you have a link to the original article?

Hi Amir,

If you can't comment on this, I understand, but I just thought I'd ask anyways.

There seem to be a lot of problems with combo discs recently (people are reporting problems with Children of Men, Happy Feet, and most recently, The Good Shepherd.) At the same time this is happening, Universal seems to be packing it in on combos (to some extent at least.) I'm not particularly a fan of combo discs, but do you have any idea what it going on?
I don't have any insight here. I can say that preliminary data we have points to authoring error on Children of Men, not any combo issues. But we are still investigating.

As for Universal, their new policy is to use combos only on new titles, not library.

I picked up Happy Feet, and I'm kind of having problems with it on my 360 HD drive. It froze/stuttered at the 28:49 mark (the exact point where lots of people have reported the same thing), but when I went back to it afterwards, it played through fine. I would have thought it was an isolated incident, except as I said,other people have had the exact same problem at the exact same point on both the 360 and the XA2 (they say with latest firmware)

People have discovered what seems to be a workaround for the XA2 (thread 827688 on this board, sorry, I can't include the full link because I'm new here):

showthread.php?t=827688

I guess my questions are, is there a problem with combo discs (physical or otherwise) or is Happy Feet doing something to cause some sort of general buffering problem?
I have seen that thread but per above, so far we are seeing a different problem. When there are errors in authoring, what the player does with it is sometimes unexpected. These formats are quite complex and dealing with all the corner cases takes time.

The stuttering though, should not be an authoring issue. I will pass this on to the team to see what they say.

I can't make sense of what they are saying there. Many TVs don't even accept 1080p so it is silly to say we force that output timing. Do you have a link to the original article?

Ah, sorry I have to make 5 posts before I can post a link, but google+360+inquirer may pull it right up.

Or perhaps is it saying if you have a 1080p TV then it can only be set to 1080p because it does it internally? Which doesn't effect me any since I only have 720p/1080i, but that might be what it is saying? Can you set the video output manually or does it select on it's own the setting?

I don't know which "dude" you are mentioning here :). But Universal is now pricing their combos without a premium. And gradually replacing their catalog combos with non-combos at lower prices.

My apology, I was referring to warner's! I had to get BR happy feet as it was cheaper!

Block buster and video shops can buy a title for $10, why would they keep combo flippers for twice as much! WB should giove u HD only option too imho

Ah, sorry I have to make 5 posts before I can post a link, but google+360+inquirer may pull it right up.

Or perhaps is it saying if you have a 1080p TV then it can only be set to 1080p because it does it internally? Which doesn't effect me any since I only have 720p/1080i, but that might be what it is saying? Can you set the video output manually or does it select on it's own the setting?
I found the article and unfortunately, it doesn't say more than that. It is funny that they attribute the first part to me, but no source for the other. And then go on with the non-sense regarding BD format support on 360.

Anyway, I am researching this a bit more to see where the comment came from. But wrt to your situation, I can't see anything to worry about.

To anyone who can answer...

The PS3 uses HDMI 1.3. Does the PS3 use HDMI 1.3's automatic audio synchronization feature to ensure proper Blu-ray lip synching over HDMI?


Following up on an oft asked question, looks like the wheels are in motion in DVD Forum to study Toshiba's triple layer, 51 gigabyte HD DVD disc. Don't have more information than this to share in public. But just thought you all want to know :).
I don't know what "study" means, but I'll ask anyway... ;) Did the DVD Forum "study" TL45 in the same way? You mentioned TL45 wasn't ever formally submitted to the DVD Forum by Toshiba, but I was wondering if TL45 was ever a real consideration.

I don't know what "study" means, but I'll ask anyway... ;) Did the DVD Forum "study" TL45 in the same way? You mentioned TL45 wasn't ever formally submitted to the DVD Forum by Toshiba, but I was wondering if TL45 was ever a real consideration.
As far as I know, no. TL-45 was not proposed to DVD Forum. What "study" means is that a technical group in DVD Forum is now studying the new proposal. That is the first formal step in getting a new format established.

Interesting development, thanks.

Amir, it seems that you missed this question while you were away:

Meet Joe Black has been announced for May 26.

The D-Theater version was very bad, almost looking as an upconvert due to a very poor master.

Will the HD-DVD version use a new transfer, or can we expect the same DVD like (lack of) quality?

Any information on that title would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Robert, I am researching that question. When I hear back, I will post it here.

Robert, I am researching that question. When I hear back, I will post it here.

Thanks, I won't pester you about it again. Knowing that you try is enough!

As far as I know, no. TL-45 was not proposed to DVD Forum. What "study" means is that a technical group in DVD Forum is now studying the new proposal. That is the first formal step in getting a new format established.

Amir,

What is a typical time frame before a new format such as the TL51 being approved.

Follow up on the 1080p mention in the Inquirer. Their data definitely seems incorrect. You can choose 480p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p (assuming the EDID indicates support) or you can choose “optimal resolution” which will be set to the monitor’s preferred timing (and assuming that that preferred timing matches a resolution we support (e.g. 640x480, 848x480, 1024x768, 1280x768, 1280x720, 1360x768, 1280x1024, 1920x1080)).

Amir,

What is a typical time frame before a new format such as the TL51 being approved.
Our guess is 6 to 12 months. Note that there are some other interesting variations being proposed on top of the base TL-51. But I like to keep you in suspense on them until there is more discussion in the forum :). These variations may make it longer to ratify their proposal.

Let me ask this again as it hasn't been answered yet:

Will the spring update feature new resolutions over VGA, such as 1440x900 and 1680x1050.

If not, what's the reason for that? There is already a 16:10 resolution supported (1280x768) so I can't think of why the higher resolutions wouldn't work.

Amir,

I know you are not a spokesperson for Universal. But if new releases will be combos, and not have a premium, why do you think Universal would not just eliminate their DVD sku too?

I think doing something like that will definitely help the adoption of HD DVD. Or, even better, releasing HD DVD discs earlier than DVD.

Our guess is 6 to 12 months. Note that there are some other interesting variations being proposed on top of the base TL-51. But I like to keep you in suspense on them until there is more discussion in the forum :). These variations may make it longer to ratify their proposal.
Is the currently studied TL51 higher bandwidth than DL30?

I know you need to keep a few things secret, but I ask because you previously mentioned it. :)

Let me ask this again as it hasn't been answered yet:

Will the spring update feature new resolutions over VGA, such as 1440x900 and 1680x1050.

If not, what's the reason for that? There is already a 16:10 resolution supported (1280x768) so I can't think of why the higher resolutions wouldn't work.
No new resolutions.

I don't know the answer other than it probably increases our test time/resources given the larger permutations that must be looked at. I personally agree with the need to support the resolution of computer LCDs.

Amir / Ben

RE: U Control feature on CHILDREN OF MEN HD-DVD

How is the video processing accomplished for the zoom back of the main image when the PIP image is used

To wit; is PQ of the full screen image affected when the PIP is not present -- does the main image go thru additional processing
when the U control logo is present or just when the PIP is visible?

I am somewhat suspect of having the full frame PQ degraded
to accododate the "extras."

Also, please convey my vote to Universal et. al. that I prefer
my "extras" full frame. I do not consider U Control "extras" to be an advantage. . . so please program the discs so we have the option to see all the "extras" without having to go thru U Control.

Oh yeah, also convey my dislike of combos.

thanks,


-30-

Question for Amir or the other HD DVD insiders:

The HD DVDs that Toshiba has released in Japan (such as The Brothers Grimm, Finding Neverland, and the copy of Resident Evil bundled with the HD-XA1 player) are labelled on the packaging as "1080i Hi-Def". Can you find out if these discs are genuinely encoded interlaced, or if they're really 1080p24 and simply mislabelled (a la the debate about "Chronos" in this forum)? Thanks.

HD DVD insiders, have you been able to find out any further information on this issue?

So what date is this firmware projected to be released on? 29 Apr 07 along with the Elite Xbox?

HD DVD insiders, have you been able to find out any further information on this issue?
We are pretty sure they are 1080p24 encodes. I was waiting for confirmation of it but didn't get it. I pinged my folks again. Will report back if I hear anything different.

So what date is this firmware projected to be released on? 29 Apr 07 along with the Elite Xbox?
We have not announced a date for either update. I did hint at when the HD DVD release might come out a few pages back...

Amir,

If Childern of Men is an authoring issue (2 discs didn't play right me) where can we contact to get a proper working copy and any timeframe on that?

Thanks,
Robert.

Amir,

If Childern of Men is an authoring issue (2 discs didn't play right me) where can we contact to get a proper working copy and any timeframe on that?

Thanks,
Robert.
You wouldn't :). We will have to put in a work around to accomodate what the programmer intended to do, as opposed to what he/she wrote. Many of the title "fixes" are for this kind of issue. Of course, if there is no way to work around it then the disc would have to be fixed somehow but I doubt it.

Now you know why we didn't want to make these full blown programming platforms. HDi is simple and people still have bugs in their code. Heaven help the other folks who really expect creative people to write "programs" to run on their discs :p.

Amir,

If Childern of Men is an authoring issue (2 discs didn't play right me) where can we contact to get a proper working copy and any timeframe on that?

Thanks,
Robert.
You wouldn't :). We will have to put in a work around to accomodate what the programmer intended to do, as opposed to what he/she wrote. Many of the title "fixes" are for this kind of issue. Of course, if there is no way to work around it then the disc would have to be fixed somehow but I doubt it.

Now you know why we didn't want to make these full blown programming platforms. HDi is simple and people still have bugs in their code. Heaven help the other folks who really expect creative people to write "programs" to run on their discs :p.

Josh, just confirmed that the Japanese HD DVDs are indeed 1080p24 encodes.

Amir,

Back on 3/25 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10121364&&#post10121364), you had mentioned:

Indeed, one of our program managers wrote a prototype space invader game in just two hours

and I had replied a while later:

Any chance we could get a "downloadable and burnable on a DVD" version of this prototype game?

I think it would be a great demonstration of the capabilities of HDi, and just plain cool, even if it were as crude as ascii-art (well, maybe not that crude).

I haven't seen a reply to this, so I figured either 1) it got lost in the flurry of posts that you are constantly trying to field, or 2) my request was too inane to justify a reply. :)

My curiosity is twofold. One is that such an application is cool and I would be interested in seeing something like that in person.

The second is that it intrigues me from a progamming standpoint. I've begun to look into the software required to build HDi apps, as I would be curious to see if I could build a media viewer in HDi to access photos, videos, etc. off a USB flash drive or across the Internet.

This second item welcomes an analysis as to whether studios could provide stills and additional videos on their web sites, accessible from an HD DVD using HDi?

My limited understanding of HDi says that it should be possible. Could you confirm this?

Thanks for your seemingly tireless ability to answer a flood of questions. Your participation on these forums is one of the reasons I purchased my HD-A1 back in October.

Amir / Ben

RE: U Control feature on CHILDREN OF MEN HD-DVD

How is the video processing accomplished for the zoom back of the main image when the PIP image is used

To wit; is PQ of the full screen image affected when the PIP is not present -- does the main image go thru additional processing
when the U control logo is present or just when the PIP is visible?

I am somewhat suspect of having the full frame PQ degraded
to accododate the "extras."

Actually, that's not the way players need to work. I guess you're afraid the compositing forces a switch to RGB mode? The right solution, and the one I believe extant and future players will use, is to leave the video data in native colorspace, and convert any elements to composite in to video colorspace.

Amir,

First of all, thank you dearly for the patience and understanding you have presented on these forums. If more insiders were willing to disclose information like this, the gaming world would be a far better place.

I apologize for my ignorance in the HDTV spectrum, as I've spent the last three weeks researching my newfound technology purchase. It's been a crazy ride and I can imagine that the board members probably understand twice as much as I have learned. Who knows, they may beat you to the answers. :)

Question 1. My television is a Samsung LN-S4095D 40" 1080p LCD HDTV. It supports 1080p component cable resolutions as well as two HDMI slots. While I would love to use the HDMI cable, would there be any noticeable difference between a 1080p component cable (visually, obviously, I'm aware that the audio is different) and HDMI? I would suspect there would be with analog versus digital cables, but I've heard the contrary.

Question 2. I don't have an HDMI receiver. I really don't care for one, either. However, I do have a 5.1 dolby digital audio system I purchased several years ago. The audio system has a single optical in. The Xbox 360 has an optical out slot, but it's located on the component/composite out piece and not on the console itself. My question is, can I send the HDMI signal (the video, muting the TV) to the television and send the audio (from the connected included piece for component/composite) to my audio receiver without any conflicts?

Otherwise, my option is to connect the HDMI (heaven permitting it's fine with dolby digital) via the television and hope the optical out port on the television will send the full 5.1 experience from the 360 to the television and into the receiver.

I appreciate your patience for this inquiring mind.

Hi there

XBOX ELITE GOES SILENT?
My biggest reason for not owning the xbox360 is that it makes sound like a vacuum cleaner when in action!

So when I hear about an upgrade of the 360 and some rumors about that noisy DVD drive being replaced with a much quieter one I get interested and maybe buy one myself.

Do you know if Microsoft has had any discussion on the noise level of the 360? And are they taken care off with the ELITE unit?

I am a very sensitive guy about these kind of matter, my personal computer is all for the extra $100+ to make it quiet/silent. I have owned nearly all types of DVD drives before I found the most quiet one with no unessesary spinups (my black Pioneer won).

Is there some change with fan speed and maybe new copper cooler? theres a lot going on with the cooling in the PC world right now, you would wish Microsoft stayed on top with it.

And final, will a guy in Sweden even have a chance of buying a Elite unit...?

thanks a lot
reg
Daniel Francisco Filip

amir,
Will the spring update include option on, which bitrate to stream CD's to the xbox360 harddrive? - currently only 128 kb/s?

To any HD DVD insider,

Is there anything new on the subtitle downloading service? I live in Greece and I really don't care about subtitles but...almost everyone else does. Not a single HD DVD has had greek subtitles and retailers refuse to carry them just for this fact. So I see HD DVD add-on drives all over the place, a few Toshiba players every now and then but no discs whatsoever.

Now, I know Greece is but a blip on the radar when it comes to its buying power as a market but it's a shame for the format to be handicapped here just because of subtitles.

So, is there anything moving concerning this? In each case, is there a timeframe for the implementation of the service?

You wouldn't :). We will have to put in a work around to accomodate what the programmer intended to do, as opposed to what he/she wrote. Many of the title "fixes" are for this kind of issue. Of course, if there is no way to work around it then the disc would have to be fixed somehow but I doubt it.

Now you know why we didn't want to make these full blown programming platforms. HDi is simple and people still have bugs in their code. Heaven help the other folks who really expect creative people to write "programs" to run on their discs :p.

Thanks for the info, Amir.

So the fix will hopefully come in a firmware update? basically, how do I get a working copy of Childern of Men? Since this is a big title (my top 3 of 2006) and quite popular amongst us HD DVD fans, would you please give us an update as information becomes available. Thanks!

Amir,

Back on 3/25 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10121364&&#post10121364), you had mentioned:



and I had replied a while later:



I haven't seen a reply to this, so I figured either 1) it got lost in the flurry of posts that you are constantly trying to field, or 2) my request was too inane to justify a reply. :)
Ah yes. I meant to answer it and then didn't get a chance and forgot about it :).

It would not do any good to post the sample here because it only runs in our HDi emulator. To run it in an HD DVD player would require more software to format it for that use (and burn it in an optical format).

My curiosity is twofold. One is that such an application is cool and I would be interested in seeing something like that in person.

The second is that it intrigues me from a progamming standpoint. I've begun to look into the software required to build HDi apps, as I would be curious to see if I could build a media viewer in HDi to access photos, videos, etc. off a USB flash drive or across the Internet.

Here is a good place to start: http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2007/04/02/coloured-blocks-advancing-on-a-moving-block.aspx

This second item welcomes an analysis as to whether studios could provide stills and additional videos on their web sites, accessible from an HD DVD using HDi?

My limited understanding of HDi says that it should be possible. Could you confirm this?
Most definitely.

Thanks for your seemingly tireless ability to answer a flood of questions. Your participation on these forums is one of the reasons I purchased my HD-A1 back in October.
My pleasure and thanks for investing in HD DVD!

Thanks for the info, Amir.

So the fix will hopefully come in a firmware update? basically, how do I get a working copy of Childern of Men? Since this is a big title (my top 3 of 2006) and quite popular amongst us HD DVD fans, would you please give us an update as information becomes available. Thanks!
We are still looking into this so I can't tell you if it is for sure a software upgrade and the date for it.

sorry if this has been answered already. I have a WD65831 mits dlp that has really washed out colors with the vga out, and this is the only way to get 1080p from 360. The color fix for vga the spring update brings will fix this washed out color? I assume we will not ever see a hdmi solution for current 360 users, so its nice to know they will fix the vga solution. One more question, Will the 360 over vga upconvert dvds to 1080p or 720p, 1080i only? I am glad i stumbled on this thread it is the best one on avs in my opinion. Just want to include I have had my tv isf calibrated by umr so I will not agree when someone tells me my tv calibration is causing washed out color.

sorry if this has been answered already. I have a WD65831 mits dlp that has really washed out colors with the vga out, and this is the only way to get 1080p from 360. The color fix for vga the spring update brings will fix this washed out color? I assume we will not ever see a hdmi solution for current 360 users, so its nice to know they will fix the vga solution. One more question, Will the 360 over vga upconvert dvds to 1080p or 720p, 1080i only? I am glad i stumbled on this thread it is the best one on avs in my opinion. Just want to include I have had my tv isf calibrated by umr so I will not agree when someone tells me my tv calibration is causing washed out color.
In general, yes. You will be able to select the levels used for VGA output to match it to your TV and that should give you a better image. I say "should" because some TVs have different settings for their VGA input and that could affect things too. As for calibration, unless your VGA port was calibrated, it is a good possibility that the VGA port is not where it needs to be (although could be close).

And with VGA, you can choose from a number of resolutions and we will convert the source to that resolution. Please see my earlier post on the resolutions available for VGA.

To any insiders:

It seems that the April issue of a French magazine discusses a purportedly upcoming Samsung hybrid/dual stand-alone player

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=828109&page=1&pp=30

If true, IMO this is a very exciting development - can any of you confirm the existence (or, just as importantly, the non-existence) of plans for this player?
If this player is being planned, are there any details you can share with us?

Thanks in advance for any information!

In general, yes. You will be able to select the levels used for VGA output to match it to your TV and that should give you a better image. I say "should" because some TVs have different settings for their VGA input and that could affect things too. As for calibration, unless your VGA port was calibrated, it is a good possibility that the VGA port is not where it needs to be (although could be close).

And with VGA, you can choose from a number of resolutions and we will convert the source to that resolution. Please see my earlier post on the resolutions available for VGA.

I did have my tv's vga port calibrated. I use my tv with my pc now for streaming hd content and web browsing. when i hooked up my hd dvd player to my tv's dvi which will accept both analog and digital the color was fine. i hooked up my pc with a vga dvi converter the color was fine. I am assuming the 360 is just sending out the wrong color space, so the update should fix it. Can you tell me what the color space the 360 is sending out now. I think it is 0-ire. If i can confirm that i can ask my tech support guy here at work what my tv is looking for on the dvi analog connection. Once again thanks for being a great source of true info.

Two questions...

The first is basically an expanded version of post #3392.

There's a nice little list out there that currently gives the various output resolutions supported for different video sources within the 360 depending on what output kit is used. eg. SD DVD's upscale to 480p for component, and 1080p for VGA. HD-DVD's are 1080i on component, 1080p on VGA. Could we get an updated version of that with what will be possible over HDMI.

Second question:

Is there any chance of additional output framerates being supported from the 360? I'm currently unable to run 1080p from the 360 to my 1080p display (HP MD5800N) due to limitations in what framerates the TV is capable of accepting. Over component or VGA it will accept 1080p but only at 24 or 30fps - the 360 will only output 1080p at 60fps. I'm currently stuck at 720p, due to the 360's limitation of not allowing interlaced resolutions (1080i specifically) over the VGA cable - I'm hoping the Elite + HDMI will fix this as the TV does support 1080p60 over HDMI, but I don't want to lose my DVD upscaling (see question 1).

I did have my tv's vga port calibrated. I use my tv with my pc now for streaming hd content and web browsing. when i hooked up my hd dvd player to my tv's dvi which will accept both analog and digital the color was fine. i hooked up my pc with a vga dvi converter the color was fine. I am assuming the 360 is just sending out the wrong color space, so the update should fix it. Can you tell me what the color space the 360 is sending out now. I think it is 0-ire. If i can confirm that i can ask my tech support guy here at work what my tv is looking for on the dvi analog connection. Once again thanks for being a great source of true info.
Yes, we will have an option to select the zero IRE or setup. Another name for this is "PC levels" vs "video levels." So you should be good to go. If not, you know where to find me :).

Amir,

You may have noticed the screenshot thread. I have pulled a distant, hard to encode piece of the background of a Mission Impossible screen grab:

http://joshd2012.googlepages.com/compare.bmp

The top image is VC-1, and the bottom is MPEG-2. You will notice that the MPEG-2 is noticeably sharper, but also grainier. It is becoming a recurring explanation that VC-1 is removing grain by softening it.

I can't imagine them filtering one before encoding, and not the other, so is MPEG-2 sharpening as it encodes, or is VC-1 softening as it encodes?

I have a pioneer VSX-59TXI reciever, which says it will decode wma pro 9. Is that all I need to take advantage of the new support for wma pro on the hd-dvd firmware update? Also did you confirm if the new wma pro support will work over optical?
If you answered this already thank you and sorry for not reading back to find the answer myself.

The only difference would be that that particular Samsung TV has an overscan problem with HDMI inputs - there is a thread for the units on this forum that describes the issue.

Just popped this reply in, in case the insider addressed was not familiar with the TV you've mentioned.
Thanks rdjam. It is good to have some helpers :).

I actually own that Samsung LCD and it does unfortunately scale HDMI input, making it softer and losing good bit of the picture area. I have not however, compared its component input to HDMI to see how that fares. I suspect it is better but I am not sure.

I have a pioneer VSX-59TXI reciever, which says it will decode wma pro 9. Is that all I need to take advantage of the new support for wma pro on the hd-dvd firmware update? Also did you confirm if the new wma pro support will work over optical?
If you answered this already thank you and sorry for not reading back to find the answer myself.
Yes, and yes :).

I hate to keep asking the same question, sorry about that..If you're looking into it, can you at least tell me your looking into it? Again, sorry, i'm really not trying to be rude.
Sorry, losing track of all the questions asked :).

But yes, we do upsample DVDs over HDMI. The resolution would be whatever you set your HDMI port to (or what it autoselects if you don't).

amir,
Will the spring update include option on, which bitrate to stream CD's to the xbox360 harddrive? - currently only 128 kb/s?
No change in the update. But the data rate is 192kbps which should be pretty good quality.

Amir,

Could you please find out (or explain if you know) why Universal would put Spanish subtitles on the SD for "The Good Shepherd" but not the HD DVD. I am going by what has been posted in a thread on this site. They take up such little space that it seems like a strange thing to leave off when the SD has it. There is a thread about it here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10193860&&#post10193860

Thanks,
Darin

While ATSC allows integer frame rates, I've not seen them used in practice. All real-world "video" framerates in NTSC countries use the 0.1% slowdown, so when we say "30p" we really mean 30/1.001, which we round to 29.97 (but it's really 29.9700002997...). Similarly, "24p" is really 24/1.001.

Thanks Ben,

Just to be sure, you are saying HD DVD (and BD?) also use the 24/1.001 frame rate, right?

- Tom

Given the fact that the update is coming soon, I suggest checking that out first. It is not like you are sitting there with nothing to watch. The current box is very capable on its own and gets even better with the update. If after trying that, you still need the new box, you can check out the reviews and user feedback and then pull the trigger to upgrade the hardware.
Hi Amirm,
Can we expect the audio update this week or within 2 weeks to 1 month?
Many thanks,
Will

Hello everyone. Sorry for the late response. As I posted before, I was at a 2-day offsite with no net access (or time to use it!). Trying to catch up with all the questions asked.

Xbox 360 Elite supports HDMI 1.2 profile. For audio, you can select DD, DTS (at 1.5 Mbps), and WMA-Pro (Microsoft high fidelity multi-channel codec supported in some AVRs such as Pioneer).

Regarding this I have a Pioneer 915 Ampli with wmapro support, and I did enabled it

in the audio options of the 360,but till now I couldnt yet find a way to test the

ampli for that codec. I have downloaded many microsoft clips from the wmv HD

page but max I do get is the DD logo no Wmapro logo,please everbody help me

with ways to finally test this feature consider I have everything hooked up to the

ampli: x360,ps3,pc,ps2 etc

Hi Amirm,
Can we expect the audio update this week or within 2 weeks to 1 month?
Many thanks,
Will
Closer to the later...

Amir,

Could you please find out (or explain if you know) why Universal would put Spanish subtitles on the SD for "The Good Shepherd" but not the HD DVD. I am going by what has been posted in a thread on this site. They take up such little space that it seems like a strange thing to leave off when the SD has it. There is a thread about it here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10193860&&#post10193860

Thanks,
Darin
Sure. Have the question out to them...

Regarding this I have a Pioneer 915 Ampli with wmapro support, and I did enabled it

in the audio options of the 360,but till now I couldnt yet find a way to test the

ampli for that codec. I have downloaded many microsoft clips from the wmv HD

page but max I do get is the DD logo no Wmapro logo,please everbody help me

with ways to finally test this feature consider I have everything hooked up to the

ampli: x360,ps3,pc,ps2 etc

WMA Pro *decoder* is in the current release. However, on the way out of the box, it gets converted to Dolby Digital hence the reason you see DD logo.

With the upcoming update, for HD DVD playback, you will be able to select WMA Pro and experience the native sound.

is the 360 capable in the future to support dts or wma pro for game applications?

is the 360 capable in the future to support dts or wma pro for game applications?
In principal yes.

is the 360 capable in the future to support dts or wma pro for game applications?

That's been addressed at least twice in the last 2-3 pages.

Amir, So with this new audio update, would you say out of the 3 audio output options that will be available, WMA Pro will be best?

I am assuming, from what you have said so far, that the general quality will be as follows (from best to worst)

WMApro
DTS
DD

Is that accurate in your view?

when the 360 upscales dvd's does it properly identify and use 2/3 film correction. Does it properly upscale to 1080x1920, or does it throw away half the lines like some televisions? the regular dvd playback on the 360 looks horrible to me, so I'm hoping the upscaled 1080p does the trick.

That's been addressed at least twice in the last 2-3 pages.

Amir, So with this new audio update, would you say out of the 3 audio output options that will be available, WMA Pro will be best?

I am assuming, from what you have said so far, that the general quality will be as follows (from best to worst)

WMApro
DTS
DD

Is that accurate in your view?
To be honest, I have not compared them in this scenario. All three codecs are running in real-time which makes them a different animal than offline encoding.

And frankly, I don't want to go and defend WMA Pro across hundreds of posts :). So I am not going to pick a certain order. The nice thing here is that unlike how the movies are produced, it is you, the consumer who has the choice. So dial the one that makes it sound the best to you.

Of course, I resever the right to come back and promote WMA Pro if it indeed does outperform the others :D.

Amir,

Is there any type of "error catching" that can be done with HDi authored movies, so that players that might not be able to fully play the advanced menu fallback to a more basic/simple mode that will at least allow users to play and watch the movie? If so, what's the possibility of this happening for movies? And please, maybe pass this on the the studios/authoring houses if the functionality is there.

This is for Amir

I've had this issue with the 360 ever since I got one at launch in 2005, why do cd's or any two channel audio show up as 5.1 channel on my lexicon pre\pro? Not only are they showing up as 5.1 but the only sound are coming out of the right and left speakers the sub, surrounds and center do not have any sound coming out when playing 2 channel audio or cd's in the 360.

The 360 should be telling my pre\pro it is only sending a 2 channel source not a 5.1 channel source. It seems the 360 is not properly broadcasting linear pcm for 2 channel audio. Now the original xbox correctly did this, cd's would correctly be detected as 2 channel audio and actually at 48KHZ so it seems the original xbox did some upsampling.

I'm using the optical output and have no problems with any other source and had no problems with the original Xbox, this issue is completely isolated to the 360.

The only way to get correctly get 2 channel audio out of the 360 is to go in the menu option and manually switch it to stereo instead of 5.1. shouldn't the 360 be smart enough to do this for me?

We are still looking into this so I can't tell you if it is for sure a software upgrade and the date for it.


Amir,

Thanks for your quick follow up to all these questions. I'm sure we all appreciate it :)

Thanks to Amir for his time and patience answering all our endless questions.

For my part, my question to Amir is whether we will see any enhanced on-screen details while watching DVDs or HD-DVDs such as bit-rate, codec, etc.

As a Westinghouse LCD owner, it appears we are among the lucky who seem to currently have the best VGA performance. My 47" set looks fantastic at 1080p although admittedly I did have to tweak my brightness, color levels quite a bit to reach this picture quality. I doubt the spring update will be able to offer any picture quality improvements as it's about perfect now.

My final question which I apologize may have been answered already is whether we will ever see Xvid/DivX support on the 360.

Thanks again for your time Amir and maybe we'll see you soon in the Toronto area.

C.

Hey Amirm,

You seem to work very hard answering questions on this thread. It must be tough so thanks!

I wanted to make sure you were aware that there seemed to be a similar problem (though not quite with the same amount of publicity) as the 'Children of Men' HD DVD - 360 problem with 'The Departed': http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=818379 .

My question is, with the Xbox 360 Elite, using HDMI to my 1080p TV, will the source remain 1080p the entire way (i.e. there is no conversion from 1080p to 1080i to 1080p again)? I know there is probably no discernable difference in quality, but my theory is the less manipulation, the better.

Again, thanks for taking the time!

Thanks to Amir for his time and patience answering all our endless questions.
My pleasure. The timing has been good as I have had time to keep up. Will be able to do the same tomorrow but then on the plan to Japan and offline for a bit...

For my part, my question to Amir is whether we will see any enhanced on-screen details while watching DVDs or HD-DVDs such as bit-rate, codec, etc.
No plan really. These things are not accurate and are simply eye candy. There is no way to have accurate real-time data on variable rate streams like video. There is a buffer that fills and empties, masking the true data rate. I chuckle when I see people talk about specific numbers spitting out of PS3 for some video segment. I see multi-second delay between the true peaks and what PS3 shows for example.

As a Westinghouse LCD owner, it appears we are among the lucky who seem to currently have the best VGA performance. My 47" set looks fantastic at 1080p although admittedly I did have to tweak my brightness, color levels quite a bit to reach this picture quality. I doubt the spring update will be able to offer any picture quality improvements as it's about perfect now.
Yes, some of these displays targetted at PC use have better data paths than consumer LCDs. Per my ealier note, my Samsung overscans and try as I might, I could not get anyone at their booth to underand me at CES, let alone plan to fix that. Had the same reaction from Sharp people, sad to say.

My final question which I apologize may have been answered already is whether we will ever see Xvid/DivX support on the 360.
No plans really. The problem is more on the business side, than technical, when you are a company our size.

My pleasure. The timing has been good as I have had time to keep up. Will be able to do the same tomorrow but then on the plane to Japan and offline for a bit...

Hi Amirm,
If its a work trip to Japan could you find out from Tosh how one would get a copy of 'Biohazard', the HD-DVD that came with the 1st gen units? Its proving quite difficult trying to track one down!
Many Thanks,
Will

Amirm,

Not sure if you can answer this, but will the elite distribute simultaneous video from component and HDMI.

I currently distribute component thoughout my house and would hate to loose this funtionality...

DO

WMA Pro *decoder* is in the current release. However, on the way out of the box, it gets converted to Dolby Digital hence the reason you see DD logo.

With the upcoming update, for HD DVD playback, you will be able to select WMA Pro and experience the native sound.
Hi Amir - I've just been reading this thread a bit more and couldn't help but catch some potential significance in this answer.

Does this mean that if the 360 Elite were to decode a TrueHD lossless soundtrack, that it could convert the lossless 5.1 audio to WMA Pro (lossless) and output this to a compatible AVR? In effect, would this mean we could actually get the lossless audio after all?

Hey amirm great job with getting replies to the masses even if some.... well you know.
I'm about to ask one of the "dumber" questions here but hey, why not take a shot right?
I have this model HDTV, SONY KDL-32S2010 (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/+INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Print?ProductSKU=KDL32S2010) , and I wanted to know if infact the HDMI will give me that much improvement over the VGA when the update comes out and , to add more "dumbness" , will that give me even more improvement over component.

As of now I have my 360 doing component and the comcast cable box doing hdmi with the vga actually open. I'm figuring that I can do better. As you guys have been working with sony models for specific issues , and considering that my model is relatively cheap (ain't no XBR high-falutin stuff, lol) I would hope that you guys actually had one on hand to use for testing. If so could I be so lucky to get that kind of info as the best way (without going over that point of diminishing returns) to get the signal from my 360 to the display.

Do you really see that much improvement from VGA to component with the Sony's, will the Elite really be that much better over the VGA via the Sony?

Thanks for answering the questions Amirm.

Just wondering if you've heard anything about what brand DVD drive the Elite will have?

Amirm,

Sorry to beat a dead and warn horse at this point, but the only reason I ask this is because you've posted responses to this question and later on in the thread contradicted what you had originally said.

One of the biggest questions is whether or not there will be new resolutions for VGA, more specifically 1440x900 and 1680x1050. In a few cases your response was suggesting that there would or might be something new as seen in this response -

They tell me they have added other resolution settings. So maybe one of them is what you are interested in.

But later on your flat out state -

No new resolutions.

I don't know the answer other than it probably increases our test time/resources given the larger permutations that must be looked at. I personally agree with the need to support the resolution of computer LCDs.

So, I guess I'm confused as to which it is, yes or no. Can you please clarify to set the record straight once and for all. I/we would REALLY appreciate it. :)

There are slight censorship cuts for the worldwide version of CR in UK and Germany. Except for the US which has 3 short edits for censorship, all other regions are getting the full un-cut version. The transfer quality will be the same since they were created at the same time.

Like CR, KFH should also have the same picture quality, regardless of version.

Are you sure abou the german release because the thetrical release and the DVD release are uncut and have the complete torture scene.

Amirm,

Sorry to beat a dead and warn horse at this point, but the only reason I ask this is because you've posted responses to this question and later on in the thread contradicted what you had originally said.

One of the biggest questions is whether or not there will be new resolutions for VGA, more specifically 1440x900 and 1680x1050. In a few cases your response was suggesting that there would or might be something new as seen in this response -



But later on your flat out state - No new resolutions



So, I guess I'm confused as to which it is, yes or no. Can you please clarify to set the record straight once and for all. I/we would REALLY appreciate it. :)

Ditto. I'm pretty sure no means no in this case, unfortunately. It's pretty clear that no new resolutions will be added. However...

Amir, I'd like to point you in the direction of a thread on the Official Xbox 360 hardware forums. I can't post direct links yet do to my post count, but just go to the Hardware forums on the official site and look for a topic that has now exceeded 500 posts titled "Re: Need 16:10 Resolution Support... 1440x900... 1680x1050..." I was just wondering if maybe you or someone could step into that thread and finally set everyone straight. All the second guessing and begging/hoping in that thread has gone on long enough.

No new resolutions.

I don't know the answer other than it probably increases our test time/resources given the larger permutations that must be looked at. I personally agree with the need to support the resolution of computer LCDs.

Amir:

In your opinion do you think the 360 will ever see support for 16:10 (1680x1050, 1440x900 etc.) resolutions?

Widescreen monitors seem as common as mud these days and it's disappointing to see this feature miss yet another update. It seems there is enough demand to warrant the time it would take to implement this feature.

Thanks for your time.

One thing I always thought we be nice is to have the 360 be a remote desktop client to my PC server that I have in another part of the house. If there was some way I could hook a USB keyboard/mouse to the Elite and use my Sony XBR3 as the monitor, that would be really cool.

Sometimes I'm watching TV and I want to send a quick email or want to check something on the internet... how nice would it be to use the 360 to do that instead of having to put another PC by the TV, or to go to my office upstairs.

Anyone else ever thought of this?

Thanks Amir, for the time you put into this forum... especially with all of the Elite questions you have been bombarded with this week.

I was going to ask him the same thing. So many people are screaming for those resolutions. Including myself. It really should be in this upcoming update. xbox.com forums has LOADS and LOADS of this request by different people.

Amirm,

Sorry to beat a dead and warn horse at this point, but the only reason I ask this is because you've posted responses to this question and later on in the thread contradicted what you had originally said.

One of the biggest questions is whether or not there will be new resolutions for VGA, more specifically 1440x900 and 1680x1050. In a few cases your response was suggesting that there would or might be something new as seen in this response -



But later on your flat out state -



So, I guess I'm confused as to which it is, yes or no. Can you please clarify to set the record straight once and for all. I/we would REALLY appreciate it. :)

Amir-

If possible- sent you a PM

Thanks Kevin

Amir-

If possible- sent you a PM

Thanks Kevin
Coming right back at you :).

Amir:

In your opinion do you think the 360 will ever see support for 16:10 (1680x1050, 1440x900 etc.) resolutions?

Widescreen monitors seem as common as mud these days and it's disappointing to see this feature miss yet another update. It seems there is enough demand to warrant the time it would take to implement this feature.

Thanks for your time.
I am hoping to convince them to do this for a/v applications. For gaming, it is harder because that impacts the ecosystem there and the graphics subsystem.

Would having this in video mode satisfy or is the request also for gaming?

Amir,

I am excited about managed copy. I am wondering why Microsoft doesn't maybe lead by example and implement a type of managed copy for Xbox 360.

I would love to have hard drive copies of my games so that I don't have to get up and swap discs for every game invite.



Maybe if I ran the Xbox team, you would be able to do that. But I don't :p.

Amir,

Since you're bombarding the Xbox team with a bunch of other questions, if you haven't already, could you forward this one to them as well?

Even better, do you think an insider on the Xbox team would be willing to drop by in the Xbox area of this board and field some questions?

They did a such a great job making the controllers wireless with the response of a wired controller (even through walls) that a lot of us are physically disconnected from our games. The Xbox UI and Live would really pull together to make gaming on an Xbox the perfect experience if we could pre-load a handfull of games to the hard drive.

Thanks!

when the 360 upscales dvd's does it properly identify and use 2/3 film correction. Does it properly upscale to 1080x1920, or does it throw away half the lines like some televisions? the regular dvd playback on the 360 looks horrible to me, so I'm hoping the upscaled 1080p does the trick. .



Not to beat a dead horse but do you have an answer for this as well. Thank you for your honesty

Amir,

Will the WMA Pro encoder for the Xbox 360 encode to 5.1 or 7.1? It looks like Pioneer receivers only decode 5.1. Are there any WMA Pro 7.1 decoding receivers available now or in the near future?

Any AVS insider :)

Any chance of making an "Ask Amir XBOX questions" thread so the rest of us can expect this thread to be about HD media and technologies?

Samsung Universal Player in July?

To HD DVD and BD Insiders:

Is this true that Samsung will deliver a Universal Player for both formats in July or is this a Aprils Fools joke? From what I understand it will be HDi compliant so it would be able to display the HD DVD logo. Also, I understand that it is supposed to deliver 1080p/24 BD only but 1080p for both BD and HD DVD.

Are we being joshed?

Hello Amirm, first time poster, long time reader of the forums. My question, is simple. I use only optical cable to my xbox360 add-on. The upcoming update will allow me to listen the tacks that are beyond 600 kpbs range in dts 1.5 mbps (i.e. True HD tracks). How ever, Owning a 6.1 Yamaha receiver, I cannot get the signals to work as EX on DD . Will it be possible to get DTS ES discreet with the update? Meaning, if the new sounds "should" be on 7.1, shouldn't I get things at least as dolby digital ex, or with the dts, as DTS ES?

Second question is quick, I own a Samsung LCD TV, it's only HD ready, but I'm really happy with it. Anyway, I do have a VGA input, but when I use it with the Add-on, colors get really bad, and my tv doesn't allow to alter the settings of VGA. Detail is better, but color is... really bad. Will the update allow me to alter those settings from my xbox as if it were a PC? also, I have dvi input, would you recommend to use a vga-dvi convertor and use it in the meantime to correct this issue and keep the quality of vga??

btw, when will the update come out?!?!?!? is already April!!

Thank you so much for your time.

hi amirm

i was just wondering if the upcoming update will improve the standard DVD picture and sound quality.

thank u

Are you sure abou the german release because the thetrical release and the DVD release are uncut and have the complete torture scene.

There were a total of 5 brief scenes that were affected by censorship in the US. The torture scene must have passed muster for the UK/Germany version.

Please dont treat us europeans any worse. We love pcm just as mutch as everyone else.

What timeframe do you expect to have the europe plans finalized?

Sony releases Curse of the Golden Flower soon. What position will the subtitles be on screen?

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I understand the appeal of LPCM worlwide, but as a practical matter, lossless coding will work best (and should sound slightly better) in the long run.

I checked yesterday and "Curse of the Golden Flower" was too far along for the dual-sub position feature. I am checking as to which title will be the first to offer this.

Hello Amirm, first time poster, long time reader of the forums. My question, is simple. I use only optical cable to my xbox360 add-on. The upcoming update will allow me to listen the tacks that are beyond 600 kpbs range in dts 1.5 mbps (i.e. True HD tracks). How ever, Owning a 6.1 Yamaha receiver, I cannot get the signals to work as EX on DD . Will it be possible to get DTS ES discreet with the update? Meaning, if the new sounds "should" be on 7.1, shouldn't I get things at least as dolby digital ex, or with the dts, as DTS ES?
The answer is no currently. But we can consider that in the future. As you know, there is very little activity these days beyond 5.1 encoding. So that would need to change to justify doing the extra work, paying higher royalties, etc.

Second question is quick, I own a Samsung LCD TV, it's only HD ready, but I'm really happy with it. Anyway, I do have a VGA input, but when I use it with the Add-on, colors get really bad, and my tv doesn't allow to alter the settings of VGA. Detail is better, but color is... really bad. Will the update allow me to alter those settings from my xbox as if it were a PC? also, I have dvi input, would you recommend to use a vga-dvi convertor and use it in the meantime to correct this issue and keep the quality of vga??
A converter might work because on some TVs, they make different assumptions for the VGA input than digital (i.e. assuming VGA is always a PC with its video levels which are different than A/V format used in DVDs, HD DVDs, etc.).

btw, when will the update come out?!?!?!? is already April!!

Thank you so much for your time.

Well, we said "early to mid spring," not April :). We are getting close though. So you may want to wait for that update before spending money on adapters and such.

Samsung Universal Player in July?

To HD DVD and BD Insiders:

Is this true that Samsung will deliver a Universal Player for both formats in July or is this a Aprils Fools joke? From what I understand it will be HDi compliant so it would be able to display the HD DVD logo. Also, I understand that it is supposed to deliver 1080p/24 BD only but 1080p for both BD and HD DVD.

Are we being joshed?
I can' t comment on anything specific regarding Samsung. I can say as I have in the past that there will be more companies beyond LG building dual format players. When and who they are I can't say.

Any AVS insider :)

Any chance of making an "Ask Amir XBOX questions" thread so the rest of us can expect this thread to be about HD media and technologies?
Please no :). I will not be able to answer all Xbox questions I might get in such a thread.

What is being asked here is in the context of the A/V peformance of 360 which I think is appropriate given the level of interest and the fact that I only post in this thread.

I realize BD folks may be bored seeing all of these posts. But as is the case with PS3 questions, I think it is fair game here. Pun intended :D

Amir,

Will the WMA Pro encoder for the Xbox 360 encode to 5.1 or 7.1? It looks like Pioneer receivers only decode 5.1. Are there any WMA Pro 7.1 decoding receivers available now or in the near future?
It is 5.1. I don't know of any 7.1 systems other than using a PC. Alas, there is scant content in 7.1 so when and if demand picks up there, we can work with our hardware partners to support it.

I can' t comment on anything specific regarding Samsung. I can say as I have in the past that there will be more companies beyond LG building dual format players. When and who they are I can't say.

Amir....

One thing I find very odd is that those universal players do not treat HD DVD the way they treat Blu-ray. LG's player, for example, seems not to support all HD DVD functionalities (as far as I've been reading).

Now comes the Samsung universal player who seems will NOT output 1080p from HD DVD and will only do that for Blu-ray. WHY? Isn't that ridiculous?

Ok, ok... an universal player is better than a BD-only player... but it looks like those are BD players with diminished HD DVD capabilities. And I'm afraid that will present a PR problem for HD DVD, since it will be perceived as an inferior format.

Get it? :confused:

Any chance we will see a 1080p/24 update to the xbox hd-dvd player?

Amir....

One thing I find very odd is that those universal players do not treat HD DVD the way they treat Blu-ray. LG's player, for example, seems not to support all HD DVD functionalities (as far as I've been reading).
That is true and not a good thing. Fortunately, reviews and users alike have been vocal about HD DVD side working as it should. With future devices not being modified BD players, I hope this problem will become less of a factor in the future.

Now comes the Samsung universal player who seems will NOT output 1080p from HD DVD and will only do that for Blu-ray. WHY? Isn't that ridiculous?
Agreed if true :).

Ok, ok... an universal player is better than a BD-only player... but it looks like those are BD players with diminished HD DVD capabilities. And I'm afraid that will present a PR problem for HD DVD, since it will be perceived as an inferior format.

Get it? :confused:
Actually, they represent a postive thing for us. You have to remember that the day before LG announced their dual format player, they were "BD exclusive." Now they are not, acknowledging the value of HD DVD in the marketplace. To the extent other BD exclusive CE companies share the same views, that would be even more positive for us. Clearly if BD is "winning," someone hasn't told them in the same meeting where that news is shared :).

But yes, we like them to fix these deficiencies and as such, be able to sport an HD DVD logo on their product. They can only market such devices for so long without full support.

To any HD DVD insider,

Is there anything new on the subtitle downloading service? I live in Greece and I really don't care about subtitles but...almost everyone else does. Not a single HD DVD has had greek subtitles and retailers refuse to carry them just for this fact. So I see HD DVD add-on drives all over the place, a few Toshiba players every now and then but no discs whatsoever.

Now, I know Greece is but a blip on the radar when it comes to its buying power as a market but it's a shame for the format to be handicapped here just because of subtitles.

So, is there anything moving concerning this? In each case, is there a timeframe for the implementation of the service?

I am hoping to convince them to do this for a/v applications. For gaming, it is harder because that impacts the ecosystem there and the graphics subsystem.

Would having this in video mode satisfy or is the request also for gaming?

The request is entirely for gaming, as far as I know.

Amirm,

Not sure if you can answer this, but will the elite distribute simultaneous video from component and HDMI.

I currently distribute component thoughout my house and would hate to loose this funtionality...

DO

Amirm,

In case you missed this little question...

Thanks for all of your input and info, over the past months....

To Amir or any other HD-DVD insider. Now the the HD-A1 firmware update is out are you can you offer any more specific details about the improvements other than what is offered on the website:

This firmware update adds support for certain anticipated network delivered content in future HD DVD discs, improves certain video and audio processing capabilities, as well as addresses certain disc playback and HDMI/DVI related problems identified by Toshiba.


Thanks!

I am hoping to convince them to do this for a/v applications. For gaming, it is harder because that impacts the ecosystem there and the graphics subsystem.

Would having this in video mode satisfy or is the request also for gaming?

The request is entirely for gaming. Seeing that the vga cable already allows for 1920*1080, and also the 16:10 (1280*768) aspect ratio, i don't see the difficulties involved in adding the 1680*1050 which is lower in resolution than 1920*1080, and is a supported AR of 16:10.

Video is not a concern here, cos we've all pretty gotten used to black bars in movies on lcd monitors.

Please...we really need this....there's so many posts on the xbox forums on this i don't believe no one knows about this....unless no MS developer even reads the feedback of the people?

we don't mind black bars, we just want the proper resolution supported cos built in monitor scaling usually makes the picture a little fuzzy, and that's a big no no for such high def content right?

here:
/9938884/ShowPost.aspx
and here:
/11394137/ShowPost.aspx

sorry can't do direct links yet. just add forums(dot)xbox(dot)com in front

thanks for the reply armir. I just got one last thing.
Agin, parts, this time in 3 parts.

First, I had a really weird situation, whenI watcha movie via component aI get all the "flavor" of the colours, but tends to creat grain, or some sort of noise in the picture. Sometimes you canoot see it unless you go an inch to the tv, but sometimes it looks really easy. For example, watching serenity, I got a lot of grain watching it with the components, but with the VGA was correct, only thing is that the colours were dead. Is there a reason as to why sometimes, some movies look really good on component but awafull with vga, or vice--versa or is it just a problem of colour, and when I get the update and/ the vga-dvi converson I wn't see it anymore? Also I didnt' fully understand, will the update allow me to change colour settings from my xbox like I would with a regular PC??

Second question. (this one can also be valid to any insider of person that'd like to answer it)

this one is a bit tricky, can you say at least 5 things that make, in your opinion, HD DVD better than Blu-Ray?

Third question

once HD goes to 51 gbs in a disc, will the add-on be able to play such disks? I mean, would it be needed an updatem or cann the add- on do it now?

Again, thank you so much!!!

I am hoping to convince them to do this for a/v applications. For gaming, it is harder because that impacts the ecosystem there and the graphics subsystem.

Would having this in video mode satisfy or is the request also for gaming?

Gaming, even if 16:10 support meant having black bars to keep things framed in a 16:9 ratio it would be nice to have the 360 running in a native resolution. Having read the official Xbox forums and various other gaming-centric forums there seems to be a real demand for this feature - it was even requested heavily in Major Nelson's blog post about what the users wanted to see. So I'm a bit suprised that this feature is going to miss the boat again.

Thanks for your reply.

Summing things up, I post a detailed write up of why VC-1 is superior to AVC in encoding HD material. I went through great length describing various attributes, together with historical perspective and independent data backing the same. One area was disputed by Ron and that was in the case of light quantization, AVC is not being so aggressive with its filtering. We devised a better test, and a fair comparison between the codecs, showing that opposite is true, matching our experience in the field, to say nothing of the views of our top codec experts who have not only designed VC-1, but also led the standardization of AVC and contributed significant logic to it.

Hi Amr,

I've been away from the thread for awhile (since asking Loop Filter questions and receiving kind assistance from Ben Waggoner), and while trying to catch up I ran into your follow up on the VC-1 Vs AVC question (your presentation of the touch and retouch pixel images).

I thought I had the right idea earlier from Ben and your discussions and was happy to see your examples reinforce my expectations. I think it that much more overwhelmingly evident you are entirely correct that the better "detail" of MPEG-2 Vs "softening" of VC-1 has everything to do with incidental artificial sharpening associated with the MPEG-2 block edges.

I specifically looked at the edges of objects in your images (the rigging for example) and noticed those details were largely untouched by the filter, whereas they were heavily addressed by AVC. It is simply not possible the AVC result be more accurate (unless the VC-1 pre-filtering quantization itself was flawed relative to AVC -- which seems incredibly unlikely).

Just wanted to say thank you very much for taking the time (both you and your team) for creating that demonstration. I'm sure it must have helped many readers who were still unclear as to what the effect of the loop filter really was and as to the relatively benign nature of the one implimented in VC-1.

Hi Amr,

I've been away from the thread for awhile (since asking Loop Filter questions and receiving kind assistance from Ben Waggoner), and while trying to catch up I ran into your follow up on the VC-1 Vs AVC question (your presentation of the touch and retouch pixel images).

I thought I had the right idea earlier from Ben and your discussions and was happy to see your examples reinforce my expectations. I think it that much more overwhelmingly evident you are entirely correct that the better "detail" of MPEG-2 Vs "softening" of VC-1 has everything to do with incidental artificial sharpening associated with the MPEG-2 block edges.

I specifically looked at the edges of objects in your images (the rigging for example) and noticed those details were largely untouched by the filter, whereas they were heavily addressed by AVC. It is simply not possible the AVC result be more accurate (unless the VC-1 pre-filtering quantization itself was flawed relative to AVC -- which seems incredibly unlikely).

Just wanted to say thank you very much for taking the time (both you and your team) for creating that demonstration. I'm sure it must have helped many readers who were still unclear as to what the effect of the loop filter really was and as to the relatively benign nature of the one implimented in VC-1.

Hi Trevor. This is such a heartwarming post! It took a ton of work to write (and review for correctness) my long posts on AVC vs VC-1. The reaction seemed to be disbelief and not much else which was surprising to me. As such, it is great to see that the concepts in there are indeed understood. But more importantly, observed in real content. So thanks for taking the time to chime in this way. It provides the motivation for me (and my team) to continue to write articles of that type to advance the level of discussion here.

I am hoping to convince them to do this for a/v applications. For gaming, it is harder because that impacts the ecosystem there and the graphics subsystem.

Would having this in video mode satisfy or is the request also for gaming?

Amir,

Still not a yes or no to my question, but I can read between the lines and see that as an obvious no. :)

In so far as having it put in for a future update for video mode alone? I think I speak for just about everyone here when I say that both game and video modes would be ideal. BUT, if I had to choose between the two, then I'd request it for games first and foremost.

It is a shame though, because I think this is easily one of the most (if not THE most) requested enhancements to the 360 that has been brought up time and again. Anyway, what ever can be done regarding this would greatly appreciated. :)

On a different note, the topic of 1:1 pixel mapping had been brought up earlier on and you responded that 1:1 is handled by the display device only. Near as I can tell that's incorrect. 1:1 can be handled on either the source or display end.

My monitor for example which is a Samsung 225BW has no 1:1 so 360 games, DVDs, and cable programming are stretched to fit the 16:10 aspect. But my PC on the other hand can properly display game and video images if I change a setting in my nVidia drivers. So in theory the 360 "should" be able to include 1:1 mapping unless the hardware for some odd reason can't support it (if so I'd be surprised). Might be something to pass along to the guys at MS because if nVidia can do it, I don't see why MS shouldn't be able to. Just a thought.

I am hoping to convince them to do this for a/v applications. For gaming, it is harder because that impacts the ecosystem there and the graphics subsystem.

Would having this in video mode satisfy or is the request also for gaming?
I apologise to the admins, but for me, it's primarily gaming. But I do intend to get the HD DVD Drive in the future.
Honestly, speaking, I'd love to get a a TV or monitor with 1280x720, or if not possible, just any one which the Xbox 360 supports. But considering my miserable budget I can only afford monitor and I'm really, really surprised to see that 1440x900 and 1680x1050 is the most common ones out there, more than I suspected.

As for HD DVD, it is a complete no-no if there is no resolution setting for that. The picture will appear way too fuzzy for my liking.
And even when it comes to DVDs too. The picture becomes unncecssarily fuzzy because of incompatible resolution.

Amir, is it too late to bring this up and added into the upcoming release? I'm really disappointed this has been completely missed yet again. There are so many owners, not just myself, trying in vain to bring this up to as many people as possible, including Major Nelson's site, there were so many comment entrys during the last big update in October 2006, all about this issue. And if I might say so myself, it is probably more in demand than 1080p.

Amir, is the HD-DVD camp working on getting higher maximum bitrates out of TL51? :D

Im just asking, if you're working on it, not if it's going to happen :D

Amir, is the HD-DVD camp working on getting higher maximum bitrates out of TL51? :D

Im just asking, if you're working on it, not if it's going to happen :D
I don't know how to answer "working." Toshiba is presenting their proposal and the forum will review details of it and decide. I head heard last year that TL-51 had support for 1.5X data rate but I have nothing else beyond that to confirm it.

We should wait to see what comes out of the forum.

I apologise to the admins, but for me, it's primarily gaming. But I do intend to get the HD DVD Drive in the future.
Honestly, speaking, I'd love to get a a TV or monitor with 1280x720, or if not possible, just any one which the Xbox 360 supports. But considering my miserable budget I can only afford monitor and I'm really, really surprised to see that 1440x900 and 1680x1050 is the most common ones out there, more than I suspected.

As for HD DVD, it is a complete no-no if there is no resolution setting for that. The picture will appear way too fuzzy for my liking.
And even when it comes to DVDs too. The picture becomes unncecssarily fuzzy because of incompatible resolution.

Amir, is it too late to bring this up and added into the upcoming release? I'm really disappointed this has been completely missed yet again. There are so many owners, not just myself, trying in vain to bring this up to as many people as possible, including Major Nelson's site, there were so many comment entrys during the last big update in October 2006, all about this issue. And if I might say so myself, it is probably more in demand than 1080p.

Appreciate the feedback. Since this request is not directly related to video side of things, my suggestion is to create a new thread for it in the appropriate forum and seek out consensus on exactly what resolutions, etc. people are asking for. Have the creator send me a PM with where it is and I will do my best to forward the summary to the Xbox team.

As to impacting the current releases, there is really no chance. You all want those releases for the many other things that they enable and we don't want to delay the schedule more to add features. I know I don't at least given how much punishment I get on when we release the updates :).

Samsung Universal Player in July? Looking for BD folk input. Has Samsung Gone Neutral?

Amir responded any BD or Samsung folks here to give credence or deny?

Is this true that Samsung will deliver a Universal Player for both formats in July or is this a Aprils Fools joke? From what I understand it will be HDi compliant so it would be able to display the HD DVD logo. Also, I understand that it is supposed to deliver 1080p/24 BD only but 1080p for both BD and HD DVD.

Are we being joshed?

Unfortunately not. Lossless would exceed the data rate of optical so it was not a possibility there. We could have done it for HDMI I suppose but for now, we are maxing it out at 1.5 mbit/sec.

Note that WMA Pro is more advanced than other codecs (think of it as the VC-1 of audio codecs) so at 1.5 mbit/sec, it should be quite transparent.

Hi Amir, I totally understand the reasons for not supporting HDMI 1.3 at 360 launch as the spec was not final, not many receivers existed (with HDMI) and new technology is very expensive to implement out of the gate. I am Senior FAE for a RAID controller company so I understand the business and hardware side, but is it safe to say Microsoft did not included audio paths that are "wide enough" for LPCM (in first place regardless of whether HDMI 1.3 was completed or not) as Toshiba A1 and A2 support TrueHD via decoding TrueHD tracks to LPCM as neither device supports HDMI 1.3?

Hi Amir, I totally understand the reasons for not supporting HDMI 1.3 at 360 launch as the spec was not final, not many receivers existed (with HDMI) and new technology is very expensive to implement out of the gate. I am Senior FAE for a RAID controller company so I understand the business and hardware side, but is it safe to say Microsoft did not included audio paths that are "wide enough" for LPCM (in first place regardless of whether HDMI 1.3 was completed or not) as Toshiba A1 and A2 support TrueHD via decoding TrueHD tracks to LPCM as neither device supports HDMI 1.3?
Are you asking if Toshiba could have wide enough data paths for PCM audio, why didn't we?

If so, the reason is that these are very different engines. In case of Toshiba, they have an A/V subsystem with dedicated processors for such task. The System on a Chip (SoC) on these machines decodes the audio with ready data path to a DAC or HDMI bridge for output. In other words, they are purpose built that way. The 360 is a general purpose computing platform and its data paths were designed differently.

On a different note, the topic of 1:1 pixel mapping had been brought up earlier on and you responded that 1:1 is handled by the display device only. Near as I can tell that's incorrect. 1:1 can be handled on either the source or display end.

My monitor for example which is a Samsung 225BW has no 1:1 so 360 games, DVDs, and cable programming are stretched to fit the 16:10 aspect. But my PC on the other hand can properly display game and video images if I change a setting in my nVidia drivers. So in theory the 360 "should" be able to include 1:1 mapping unless the hardware for some odd reason can't support it (if so I'd be surprised). Might be something to pass along to the guys at MS because if nVidia can do it, I don't see why MS shouldn't be able to. Just a thought.
You can compensate for scaling in the monitor but cannot fix it. In other words, you can get the right aspect ratio/cropping but as long as the display resizes what comes in, you are going to lose resolution. So I continue to say that there is no "1:1" pixel mapping in any source. For example, no HD DVD/BD player has such a feature.

You could make a case that there are displays which have a different native resolution than what their HDMI port accepts. This is the request which I have received and will pass on to the team once we finalize in the other thread on exactly what settings people want. But I don't call this "1:1" pixel mapping. I just call it different "pixel timing" (i.e. resolution settings).

Are you asking if Toshiba could have wide enough data paths for PCM audio, why didn't we?

If so, the reason is that these are very different engines. In case of Toshiba, they have an A/V subsystem with dedicated processors for such task. The System on a Chip (SoC) on these machines decodes the audio with ready data path to a DAC or HDMI bridge for output. In other words, they are purpose built that way. The 360 is a general purpose computing platform and its data paths were designed differently.

So it is done via the SOC.. I understand completely. Was not sure what path (to support TrueHD) Toshiba took (good to know). Thanks for the clarification. :)

PaidGeek:

Teased on Casino Royale, can you please share when we might see the greatest, most controversial film ever made released on BD, Bad Boys II? :)

That is true and not a good thing. Fortunately, reviews and users alike have been vocal about HD DVD side working as it should. With future devices not being modified BD players, I hope this problem will become less of a factor in the future.


Agreed if true :).


Actually, they represent a postive thing for us. You have to remember that the day before LG announced their dual format player, they were "BD exclusive." Now they are not, acknowledging the value of HD DVD in the marketplace. To the extent other BD exclusive CE companies share the same views, that would be even more positive for us. Clearly if BD is "winning," someone hasn't told them in the same meeting where that news is shared :).

But yes, we like them to fix these deficiencies and as such, be able to sport an HD DVD logo on their product. They can only market such devices for so long without full support.

Amir,

From what I have been reading (on these threads) this player will be able to output 1080p for both formats. It is that problematic 1080p/24 where there may be a difference between BD and HD DVD. Is this really a problem since few can even use this feature at present and for the forseeable future. Joe6pack won't care. Where they might care is if the BD side can't use all the features of a BD player that might be released post October 2007. Granted, Joe6pack probably won't be looking at this player but it is something to think about.

Appreciate the feedback. Since this request is not directly related to video side of things, my suggestion is to create a new thread for it in the appropriate forum and seek out consensus on exactly what resolutions, etc. people are asking for. Have the creator send me a PM with where it is and I will do my best to forward the summary to the Xbox team.

As to impacting the current releases, there is really no chance. You all want those releases for the many other things that they enable and we don't want to delay the schedule more to add features. I know I don't at least given how much punishment I get on when we release the updates :).


I sent you a PM with an appropriate link to a thread about just that. Sorry to the admins for going a little off topic there, my apologies!

Amir,

From what I have been reading (on these threads) this player will be able to output 1080p for both formats. It is that problematic 1080p/24 where there may be a difference between BD and HD DVD. Is this really a problem since few can even use this feature at present and for the forseeable future. Joe6pack won't care. Where they might care is if the BD side can't use all the features of a BD player that might be released post October 2007. Granted, Joe6pack probably won't be looking at this player but it is something to think about.
Got it. :)

I am hoping that in a year or so, it would be routine for display processor to convert 60p back to 24p multiples for film content.

Hello Amir, Lets shift gears for just abit:).... This was posted in another thread, and since we have had playability problems with some of the recent HD DVD releases, can you look into this? And as always we appreciate your participation!

jimby_99
Member

Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 55

Don't be too hard on Universal
I'll throw my two cents in here. I am a production supervisor on a current HD-DVD and Blu-ray release (NIN), and I went through the process of authoring and manufacturing for both formats, for both the main releases and sampler discs.

There are two problems with making titles for HD-DVD that Blu-ray doesn't have:

1. It's not possible to make a full HD-DVD burn yet to check the entire title; you have to preview the title on an emulator, which does NOT give you the ability to QC in various players. This is a huge disadvantage compared to Blu-ray, where you can make a Blu-ray burn and run it in specially modified production players.

Without the ability to burn check discs, there is virtually no way to do proper QC.

Of course you could do a manufacturing run at the plant for test discs, but for every run that you do, you have to purchase AACS security keys, which cost a bundle, and then you lose a week in the schedule waiting for the discs to be run. Not to mention that some manufacturers have large minimum quantities that make this unbelieveably costly to do.

2. The verifier software that Toshiba is responsible for is (in my opinion) not currently up to the task. For those who don't know what verifier software is...this is the software that is run when the title is received at the manufacturing plant to verify that the authoring is "legal" and to the specification. It's meant to catch specification-related bugs in the authoring BEFORE the disc is replicated.

I had a issue on one series of HD-DVDs that we ran at a well-known replicator that passed the verifier, but would not play on the Toshiba A1 player. In fact, it caused the player to require a reboot after the disc was inserted into the player. This is completely unacceptable for verifier software, and Toshiba is mostly is responsible for this piece. My company ended up eating part of the cost of a replication run because of this problem.

So I wouldn't be too hard on Universal as a lot of this stuff is probably beyond their control.

You can compensate for scaling in the monitor but cannot fix it. In other words, you can get the right aspect ratio/cropping but as long as the display resizes what comes in, you are going to lose resolution. So I continue to say that there is no "1:1" pixel mapping in any source. For example, no HD DVD/BD player has such a feature.

You could make a case that there are displays which have a different native resolution than what their HDMI port accepts. This is the request which I have received and will pass on to the team once we finalize in the other thread on exactly what settings people want. But I don't call this "1:1" pixel mapping. I just call it different "pixel timing" (i.e. resolution settings).


Amir,

I wasn't suggesting that the 360 could fix a monitor's lack of 1:1, only that it might be able to compensate for it (as you say) the same as a PC video card can do. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but 1:1 means that it would display the image in it's original aspect ratio on screen without stretching it to fit the screen. To do so it would insert black bars around the image where applicable (top and bottom or on sides) if the image is smaller that the screen's native res. That way no stretching of the original image is caused because the image being sent to the monitor would then match the native res of the monitor.

Just an idea, but I think someone else here may have also made that suggestion as well. Anyway, thanks again for the info and keeping us interested. :)

Amir,

I wasn't suggesting that the 360 could fix a monitor's lack of 1:1, only that it might be able to compensate for it (as you say) the same as a PC video card can do. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but 1:1 means that it would display the image in it's original aspect ratio on screen without stretching it to fit the screen. To do so it would insert black bars around the image where applicable (top and bottom or on sides) if the image is smaller that the screen's native res. That way no stretching of the original image is caused because the image being sent to the monitor would then match the native res of the monitor.

Just an idea, but I think someone else here may have also made that suggestion as well. Anyway, thanks again for the info and keeping us interested. :)
1:1 means every source pixel matches with only a single pixel on your display. If your TV scales, it means that it will interpolate pixels meaning every pixel will depend on more than one pixel in the source. If the interpolator cannot be bypassed, there is nothing you can do in the source to counter its effect. Yes, you can make your source image smaller so that you see all of it but every pixel still maps to more than one on the display, smearing detail, and introducing scaling errors.

And thanks for the kind words. :)

Hey Amirm,

You seem to work very hard answering questions on this thread. It must be tough so thanks!

I wanted to make sure you were aware that there seemed to be a similar problem (though not quite with the same amount of publicity) as the 'Children of Men' HD DVD - 360 problem with 'The Departed': http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=818379 .

My question is, with the Xbox 360 Elite, using HDMI to my 1080p TV, will the source remain 1080p the entire way (i.e. there is no conversion from 1080p to 1080i to 1080p again)? I know there is probably no discernable difference in quality, but my theory is the less manipulation, the better.

Again, thanks for taking the time!

Any word on my issue?

should be easy to test using optical out the 360 should tell my pre\pro it is sending a 2 channel signal when a cd is put in not a 5.1 channel signal.

"This is for Amir

I've had this issue with the 360 ever since I got one at launch in 2005, why do cd's or any two channel audio show up as 5.1 channel on my lexicon pre\pro? Not only are they showing up as 5.1 but the only sound are coming out of the right and left speakers the sub, surrounds and center do not have any sound coming out when playing 2 channel audio or cd's in the 360.

The 360 should be telling my pre\pro it is only sending a 2 channel source not a 5.1 channel source. It seems the 360 is not properly broadcasting linear pcm for 2 channel audio. Now the original xbox correctly did this, cd's would correctly be detected as 2 channel audio and actually at 48KHZ so it seems the original xbox did some upsampling.

I'm using the optical output and have no problems with any other source and had no problems with the original Xbox, this issue is completely isolated to the 360.

The only way to get correctly get 2 channel audio out of the 360 is to go in the menu option and manually switch it to stereo instead of 5.1. shouldn't the 360 be smart enough to do this for me?"

Any word on my issue?

should be easy to test using optical out the 360 should tell my pre\pro it is sending a 2 channel signal when a cd is put in not a 5.1 channel signal.

"This is for Amir

I've had this issue with the 360 ever since I got one at launch in 2005, why do cd's or any two channel audio show up as 5.1 channel on my lexicon pre\pro? Not only are they showing up as 5.1 but the only sound are coming out of the right and left speakers the sub, surrounds and center do not have any sound coming out when playing 2 channel audio or cd's in the 360.

The 360 should be telling my pre\pro it is only sending a 2 channel source not a 5.1 channel source. It seems the 360 is not properly broadcasting linear pcm for 2 channel audio. Now the original xbox correctly did this, cd's would correctly be detected as 2 channel audio and actually at 48KHZ so it seems the original xbox did some upsampling.

I'm using the optical output and have no problems with any other source and had no problems with the original Xbox, this issue is completely isolated to the 360.

The only way to get correctly get 2 channel audio out of the 360 is to go in the menu option and manually switch it to stereo instead of 5.1. shouldn't the 360 be smart enough to do this for me?"
I agree this is not a good thing and I am asking the Xbox team to consider revising in the future.

To any BD insiders:

Is AVS Forum part of Phase Hydra? The Digital Bits? Engadet?
Damn, is there something you don't know Alex? :D

If we ever write a book on this whole story, we need to dedicate a chapter to you :).

Wonder how many people will get what we are talking about....

Here it is for the third time. I hope this time it gets noticed in the, admittedly somewhat unmanageable, avalanche of questions.

To any HD DVD insider,

Is there anything new on the subtitle downloading service? I live in Greece and I really don't care about subtitles but...almost everyone else does. Not a single HD DVD has had greek subtitles and retailers refuse to carry them just for this fact. So I see HD DVD add-on drives all over the place, a few Toshiba players every now and then but no discs whatsoever.

Now, I know Greece is but a blip on the radar when it comes to its buying power as a market but it's a shame for the format to be handicapped here just because of subtitles.

So, is there anything moving concerning this? In each case, is there a timeframe for the implementation of the service?

Here it is for the third time. I hope this time it gets noticed in the, admittedly somewhat unmanageable, avalanche of questions.
I agree this is a very good idea and I have been forwarding the reuqest to the studios. Don't have anything specific to report yet. When I do, I will be sure to come and say it.

Damn, is there something you don't know Alex? :D

If we ever write a book on this whole story, we need to dedicate a chapter to you :).

Wonder how many people will get what we are talking about....
Amir - Is "Phase Hydra" a code name for a viral marketing campaign (or something like that?) Could you please elaborate?

To all insiders:

What will be the impact, if any, of the new DisplayPort standard on HD-DVD and BD players?

Damn, is there something you don't know Alex? :D

If we ever write a book on this whole story, we need to dedicate a chapter to you :).

Wonder how many people will get what we are talking about....

Certainly not me. What in God's name are you guys talking about? :confused:

- Tom

Amir - Is "Phase Hydra" a code name for a viral marketing campaign (or something like that?) Could you please elaborate?
Please see if you can drug Alex to talk about it :D.

To all insiders:

What will be the impact, if any, of the new DisplayPort standard on HD-DVD and BD players?
No impact that I see. Displayport has now adopted HDCP for its copy protection which should get it easy approval for AACS content.

The main impact is on another format war: that of connectors and TV displays! :)

"I agree this is not a good thing and I am asking the Xbox team to consider revising in the future."

Wow, so this is a by design feature or just an over sight bug?

either way thanx for the input and I hope it gets resolved.

I agree this is a very good idea and I have been forwarding the reuqest to the studios. Don't have anything specific to report yet. When I do, I will be sure to come and say it.

Thank you for taking the time, Amir. Here's hoping that something good happens.

Please see if you can drug Alex to talk about it :D.
Do you have any "insider information" as to where I might obtain a proper amount of sodium pentathol?

Alex - we have ways of making you talk... :D

Please see if you can drug Alex to talk about it :D.
Alex has already done so in the news thread.

Hi again, I know there's a lot of questions, I'll try again to see if you have a chance to get to this one.

Thank you so much again in advance!


thanks for the reply armir. I just got one last thing.
Agin, parts, this time in 3 parts.

First, I had a really weird situation, whenI watch a movie via component I get all the "flavor" of the colours, but tends to creat grain, or some sort of noise in the picture. Sometimes you cannot see it unless you go an inch to the tv, but sometimes it looks really easy. For example, watching serenity, I got a lot of grain watching it with the components, but with the VGA was correct, only thing is that the colours were dead. Is there a reason as to why sometimes, some movies look really good on component but awfull with vga, or vice--versa or is it just a problem of colour, and when I get the update and/or the vga-dvi convertor I won't see it anymore?

Also I didnt' fully understand, will the update allow me to change colour settings from my xbox like I would with a regular PC??

Second question. (this one can also be valid to any insider or person that'd like to answer it)

this one is a bit tricky, can you say at least 5 things that make, in your opinion, HD DVD better than Blu-Ray?

Third question

once HD goes to 51 gbs in a disc, will the add-on be able to play such disks? I mean, would it be needed an update or can the add- on do it now?

Again, thank you so much!!!

No impact that I see. Displayport has now adopted HDCP for its copy protection which should get it easy approval for AACS content.

The main impact is on another format war: that of connectors and TV displays! :)

I guess my question is more along the lines of: Will HD-DVD/BD players start moving towards DisplayPort, or is HDMI going to stay the connector of choice?

Also,

-- The BDA has formally kicked off a new PR campaign called "Phase Hydra"....its purpose is to seed "high profile" forums with Blu-ray advocates and target bloggers to promote Blu-ray to get the word out to the world...the campaign will also focus on "smaller, independent studio issues"...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10208851&&#post10208851

I'll follow up on Alex's question. Can any BD insiders give us a clue as to what types of marketing will be going on? Do we have to watch out for TRUE paid shills now?

I guess my question is more along the lines of: Will HD-DVD/BD players start moving towards DisplayPort, or is HDMI going to stay the connector of choice?
My sense is that the traditional CE companies will want to avoid DisplayPort lest they want to obsolete a bunch of HDMI equipment they just sold to you all :). As such, I think the push for DisplayPort will come from PC side with computer monitors and graphics card supporting it. There, there is a killer application in the form of computer displayers which have already gone past the resolution of 1080p. What CE companies call high-def and what we call high-def are in two different classes :).

Once DisplayPort catches on in PC world, I expect convergent products to support it first (i.e. far east displays which target both PCs and TVs -- the likes of Westinghouse) and eventually the traditional CE companies. It sure will be messy for a while but what else is new in this space :).

Also,

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10208851&&#post10208851

I'll follow up on Alex's question. Can any BD insiders give us a clue as to what types of marketing will be going on? Do we have to watch out for TRUE paid shills now?
Ten bucks says they are not going to say word :p. I can say a few more words when I land in Japan if there is interest...

Hi again, I know there's a lot of questions, I'll try again to see if you have a chance to get to this one.

Thank you so much again in advance!
Sorry to have missed your question. I will answer the first part. For the second, I will post when I get to Japan as my plane is taking off in a few minutes.

At high level, VGA ports on many TVs assumes that a computer is driving it, as opposed to an A/V source. Unfortunately, the world of PC uses a different range of values for each color component than the more limited range used in video domain. So when we output the proper video signal, it gets treated like an anemic video signal with washed out quality. In the new software, you will be able to instruct the 360 to convert its signals to PC levels, and hence solve this issue.

As to noise and such on component versus VGA, it is hard for me to say as I have not heard of that. Are you using a Plasma display by any chance? If so, the lower contrast of VGA port may make the signal different enough that you see a different level of "dithering" (i.e. noise insertion) for the low level signal in such displays. But I am just guessing here.

On the third part of the question and that of TL-51, there are different options which the forum and Toshiba will weigh. For example, they could decide to make the format compatible with current players for the first two layers, and let the third require new hardware. That way, existing users can continue to have the same experience as today (after all, they get 34 gigabytes with those two layers), and let the third be for less used extras. Or they could try to force compatibility with the third layer and potentially make the discs harder to manufacture.

This is why it will take a while to decide what exactly to approve.

IF 30gb is enough (as several have stated) why go through all this?

IF 30gb is enough (as several have stated) why go through all this?
I don't know what you mean by "all of this." It is not like we stopped everything and started working on TL-51. The Toshiba engineers who invented current HD DVD-30 format, wanted something to do so kept working on new variations. Then they got to something interesting they want to standardize so that others can see applications to use it. That's all. The need did NOT arise from studios going to the forum, demanding a larger disc, and having the forum go and create something from scratch. If they had, your argument would have been right. But this is not how the TL-51 came about.

TL-51 is also similar to some of the other combo formats where the other layers are DVDs (i.e. non-flippers).

From our point of view, I can tell you that we have not spent one minute on TL-51 until the work was presented to the forum. When it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, we still live pretty good with HD DVD-30 :).

Sorry to have missed your question. I will answer the first part. For the second, I will post when I get to Japan as my plane is taking off in a few minutes.

At high level, VGA ports on many TVs assumes that a computer is driving it, as opposed to an A/V source. Unfortunately, the world of PC uses a different range of values for each color component than the more limited range used in video domain. So when we output the proper video signal, it gets treated like an anemic video signal with washed out quality. In the new software, you will be able to instruct the 360 to convert its signals to PC levels, and hence solve this issue.

As to noise and such on component versus VGA, it is hard for me to say as I have not heard of that. Are you using a Plasma display by any chance? If so, the lower contrast of VGA port may make the signal different enough that you see a different level of "dithering" (i.e. noise insertion) for the low level signal in such displays. But I am just guessing here.

Thanks, OK no,I am using a LCD Samsung HD Ready. actually I get the noise NOT from VGA but from componets, and only on certain movies. In others, I don't. When I hook VGA EVERYTHING looks sharp, No noise at all, but, as I said, colours get all washed out, and that really sucks, If the update clears this, that'd be great. any way I'm buying a VGA DVI convrto, to hook the vga cable to the DVI input of my tv, wich does allow me to alter colours and anything I want, and hope to keep the VGA quality.

On the second hand, the 51 gbs disck then will require a new player??, that means, buying more players, meaning more money to spend for customers. keeping this up might get as bad as it can get, meaning people would get sick of buying every 6 month or every year a new player, and hence, making it easier for Blu-ray to win the format war.

I'll get back at you for that second question!

THANKS!!

Ten bucks says they are not going to say word :p. I can say a few more words when I land in Japan if there is interest...

Please do share with us these words... 50% of this format war is marketing.

The BDA has formally kicked off a new PR campaign called "Phase Hydra"....its purpose is to seed "high profile" forums with Blu-ray advocates and target bloggers to promote Blu-ray to get the word out to the world...the campaign will also focus on "smaller, independent studio issues"...

By the way... wasn't Hydra a multi-headed beast who got killed by Hercules? Come on... it got killed by one man. A great man... but just a man...